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The words of Christ as
principles of personal and!

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THE WORDS OF CHRIST

AS PRINCIPLES OF

PERSONAL AND SOCIAL GROWTH

JOHN ^BASCOM

AUTHOR OF PHII=OSQPHY OF RELIGION, ETC.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK : 27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET

LONDON: 25 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN

1884

Copyright by
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

1883

Press of

G. P. Putnam^s Sons

New Y^ork

INTRODUCTION.

Men are peculiarly liable in all profound questions to
find their attention so diverted by the accidents and pass-
ing moods of any development as to lose sight in part of
its underlying principles. This liability is especially great
in religion. The truths of the revelation made us in Christ
are united with innumerable historical facts, and so givQ
occasion to endless criticism. These facts as facts are be-
yond positive proof ; these criticisms have no ultimate
test of correctness. It easily happens, therefore, that the
obscure discussions and the unwarrantable suppositions
possible in these directions may confuse the prim.ary and
much plainer truths involved with them, and so bring the
entire subject in our minds into confusion and uncer-
tainty.

It is not the facts of the New Testament in their pre-
cise form, it is not the exegetical harmony of its truths in
their occasions and in their details, that are the power
working salvation among men. These may be settled in
one way or in another way, or not settled at all ; they may
conform to this opinion or to that opinion, or be amenable
to no opinion, — the real redemptive forces of the world are
not thereby altered. The redemption of society does not
depend on the exact ways in which spiritual truth has
been brought to us, but on the truth itself ; it is not,
therefore, materially affected by the range of uncertainty
that pertains to the method simply. Redemption must

iv INTRODUCTION.

be wrought out, and is being wrought out, by living,
present principles, finding their way into the thoughts,
hearts, actions of men. Redemption is an organic
process, going on at this very time, and is to be judged in
its own nature without passing beyond the hour. The
question is, What are those emotional truths which are
subserving the ends of construction and of life in the
social world ? Are these truths those of the Gospels, or
are they not ?

The exact facts of the Gospels may escape us ; we may
easily cast on them endless doubts, and raise with them
endless difficulties. They are shrouded by the gathering
mists of many centuries. Not so is it with the truths of
the Gospels. These have lost nothing and have gained
much by intervening years. They are like light that is
light at every point which it reaches, and may be pro-
nounced on without reference to its sources ; they are
like the light of the sun, which gains reflection and diffu-
sion by the medium through which it is passing, and the
things on which it is falling.

This relation of the teachings of Christ to the events of
his life gives the occasion of our present work. Without
any light estimate of historic proof, we wish simply to
waive it, and to inquire in what relations the words of
Christ, as they have actually reached us, stand to the
problem of life. We wish to see whether the assertion, I
am the way, the truth, and the life, can be sustained and
verified by the constitution of the human mind and of
society, and by the historical development which is in
progress under our very eyes. This after all is the ulti-
mate question. No matter what we may establish about
facts which have now passed into the oblivion of nineteen
centuries, we must still ask, What are the controlling in-

INTRODUCTION. V

centives of the present hour ? No matter what we fail to
prove concerning these facts, we may still hold fast a
spiritual faith, wholly defensible by virtue of the living
and potent principles present with us from that place and
that period which define the life of Christ.

It may be rationally hoped that this consideration of
the words of Christ, as an expression of the unchangeable
forces and laws of the spiritual world, may help minds en-
tangled in criticism, and losing belief by looking away
from the light instead of in the very direction of the light.
We may also be able, feeling how assured our real treas-
ures are, and how much in hand we have them, to discuss
with more quietness, fairness, and consideration, the ob-
scure circumstances under which this bequest of truth has
fallen to us. Having the spiritual personahty of Christ
distinctly before our eyes, it of itself will help us to ex-
plain very many things in his life, and will also help us to
crowd outward to the horizon those things we cannot
explain. This is our entire purpose : to turn attention
directly to the words of Christ, as holding the theory and
the only sufficient theory of spiritual growth, the forces
and the only sufficient forces wherewith to secure that
growth. Whatever else may be doubtful, it is not doubt-
ful that the spirit of the Gospels is the regenerative power
of the world. The kingdom of heaven is being brought
forward in this very way, and in this way only can it be
completed. In the measure in which this is seen to be
true, will all doubts and difficulties take a secondary and
remote position ; will the path of life and the promises of
life lie plainly before us.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I. Personality in the Words of Christ

II. Rationality in the Words of Christ

III. Spirituality in the Words of Christ

IV. The Law of Truth .
V. The Law of Love

VI. The Law of Consecration

VII. Individual Growth .

VIII. Social Growth

IX. Growth of Society Historically .

X. The Natural and the Supernatural

PAGE

I
i6
35
51
72

93
116
141
167
199

THE WORDS OF CHRIST AS PRINCIPLES

OF PERSONAL AND SOCIAL

GROWTH.

CHAPTER I.

Personality in the Words of Christ.

Development is the idea which has received more
emphasis than any other in the past century. It gathers
up and combines in one comprehensive movement those
special facts and theories — the correlation of forces, the
geologic stages, the origin of species, the growth of moral
law — that have so profoundly quickened the human
mind. Though this idea of development has been held
but crudely, and been applied but coarsely to the facts of
the world, and so wrought some mischief, it is none
the less the frame-work along which a great expansion of
spiritual life is taking place. The moment any limitations
begin to settle down on our idea of God, the moment
any one element in his character — of necessity too
narrowly conceived in all its elements — begins to assume
fixedness, the spiritual life of the soul is straitened, and
may easily be strangled. The one conception of God
which the mind always passes through, and leaves behind
it only too slowly, is that of an outside agent or will taking
its way with gigantic strides among physical things, and

2 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

bringing them into subjection and order by a force put
upon them. Evolution necessarily corrects this concep-
tion, and compels us to seek anew for God as an ab-
solutely pervasive presence, walking in the silence of
power and clothed upon with all the visible facts of the
world.

This idea of development in the physical world should
be supplemented in the spiritual world by that of growth,
which finds its first expression in life, and its full expres-
sion in conscious life. Development is the slow con-
currence of all constructive parts in the formation of one
whole. The whole is the simple product of the parts.
The parts furnish in their own nature both the material of
the work and the lines of its dependence. The whole
discloses nothing which is not in its constituents.
Growth is more than this. A power of some sort, work-
ing toward a definite product, uses material for a construc-
tive purpose not embraced in its own physical properties.
Thus each living species is anomalous in the world. The
world elsewhere and otherwise shows no such power. We
may explain all the world besides, and we have not ex-
plained the rose, the butterfly, the man.

What the spiritual world has to do with primarily is con-
scious growth, the unfolding of a Hfe known to itself and
pushing more or less distinctly toward the conditions of
progress. In treating and discussing this life, we need to
bear with us the ideas which belong to growth rather than
those which pertain to development.

If we undertake wisely and somewhat extendedly to
secure growth in society, we shall be increasingly impressed
with the fact, that the difficulties in our way are chiefly
those which pertain to the strictly personal elements.
Though there are exceptional facts, the position of a per-

PERSONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 3

son in society is usually defined by the spiritual terms
which he brings to it. Close observation generally dis-
closes personal grounds for personal difficulties. Though
one may be depressed by his circumstances, the removal
of this outside pressure is rarely a radical solution of
the problem. Some other difficulty is immediately dis-
closed which still blocks the path of progress. Still less
does an outside lift meet the ends of growth. Unless
it stands in close relation to an inside power pushing
in the desired direction, the breaking down or overleaping
of barriers may readily act like the bursting of the skin of
the grape, letting in agents of destructive fermentation.
In all living things there are buds, constructive points and
constructive powers, and outside influences that are not
addressed to these are more likely to be injurious than
beneficial.

The one truth that experience and history impress upon
us is that the problem of growth is primarily an interior
one, and that social progress, therefore, is always gathered :
up and expressed in personal progress. Nothing will
reach that which does not reach this, and nothing which
reaches this will fail to extend to that also. The
spiritual world is what its spiritual occupants make it
to be, and the Kingdom of Heaven can only come as
it comes in the hearts of individuals. And so it becomes
a problem of immense labor to carry the individual
forward through all the slow stages of growth in concert
with other individuals to the point in which strength and
wisdom and peace abide in each singly and in all
collectively.

The long stages of growth which lie behind us and lie
before us become painfully evident, and we are tempted,
changing the idea of growth for that of development, to

4 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

feel that nothing can either be accelerated or retarded by
us ; that, phrasing it philosophically, we have only to
keep pace with events ; or, phrasing it religiously, to wait
on God. This feeling is at bottom unfaithfulness to the
central idea of conscious growth as a power which pro-
poses its own ends and pushes for them.

If we look a little more closely at the secret of our own
lives, we shall see how the case stands. Men at first, full of
enthusiasm, have a tendency to rush into each other's arms
in friendship. They think that at least one or more points
of reciprocal interplay and absolute harmony can be found.
They try it, and in proportion as their natures are deep
and sonorous with one result. The instruments are not at-
tuned ; the movements are not in time. Deficiency here
and excess there bring a sense of disappointment. They
slowly separate, like two molecules whose beat is not the
same, that each may get room enough for its own un-
rhythmical movement. Conditions of close spiritual rela-
tionship hardly exist as yet between any two men. The
soul is rather startled in its progress by its own growing
solitude. When oppressed with such an experience, the
wise man does not feel that he has grounds of complaint ;
that the key-note of life is with him, and that others make
the discord. He is rather impressed with the fact of how
extended, difficult, and complicated a combination is a
true spiritual symphony. How many things in one's self
must be increased, diminished, modified, eliminated, before
he can successfully take part in it ; while the same is true
of those about him who are best fitted to unite their expe-
rience with his experience. How little right has any one
to find fault with these discords ; or, if he assumes the
right, how thereby is he carried still farther off from the
desired harmony.

PERSONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 5

One, who, breaking out of the bower of his own enthu-
siastic thoughts, makes this discovery on the barren glebe
of hfe, either sinks back into despondency, and so loses
himself without gaining anothe;;-, or, more wisely, he takes
up as a mere tyro the laws of growth with his fellow-men,
fits himself coarsely to general relations, feels his way
slowly to closer adjustments, expects much from himself,
demands little from others, catches quickly at all harmo-
nies, and without ever losing the light of his own life,
opens a casement-door, east or west, to all the Hght that
may enter from abroad. He understands that the general
must keep pace with the particular, and that no two men
can heartily embrace each other, till they are re.ady also
to embrace all true men.

Some may feel that the things now said pertain to
poetry rather than to religion.; are an affair of sentiment
quite as much as of faith. Such a conclusion is greatly to
be regretted, for religion is the harmony of Hfe with life,
and so the fulness of all life. The problem we have every
one to do with is, what are the successive steps of this
inner and this outer concord which is to be reached only
by an immense amount of personal change ?

Plainly the Kingdom of Heaven, as one of spiritual
peace and composure, has much to do and most directly
to do w^Ith this reconciliation of life with life, this sym-
pathetic enlargement of life toward life on the highest
plane of action and feeling. Poetry and religion are not
separable from each other, when they touch the highest
subjects in the highest way. While the one great thing
in religion hitherto is the love it has begotten, the one
curious thing is the hatred it has occasioned.

Some think that social progress — and there is no social
progress that is not spiritual progress — suffers most from

6 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

outside obstructions, and that these removed, growth will
be rapid. A few sporadic facts may be so explained, but
this is far from being an appreciative statement. When
the personal conditions necessary for advancement exist,
but exist under the repressing force of unfavorable circum-
stances, growth will be very manifest when these restraints
are removed. Progress, following instantly on relief, will be
vividly associated with that relief, and exclusively referred
to it. It will always be easy, therefore, to maintain a striking
argument tending to establish the dependence of social
growth on the circumstances that define social conditions.
Social science demands exceedingly broad and exceedingly
thorough inquiry, and must long suffer from the ease with
which opinions of a superficial order can be defended.
The mind can dart about on the surface of social facts,
like a water-fly, just dimpHng with its motion the current
beneath it.

Spiritual progress may be greatly burdened and greatly
lightened by social conditions, but the controUing fact is
none the less the spiritual forces with which we have to
do. It is in reference to these alone that any institutions
are either aids or hindrances. Places, times, and circum-
stances derive their significance from the persons who
occupy them. This fact is disclosed almost as clearly
in the idea of evolution as in that of growth. If we
look to physical forces for germs of life, it is not
to physical forces in their ordinary action, but in
some peculiar action which a small portion of them
take on at remote intervals and on rare occasions. More-
over, each living thing, as representing a species, is the
result of a very protracted and very peculiar development,
and by so much and by so long, has been separating itself
from the simple staple of physical forces, and accumula-

PERSONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. J

ting powers of supreme moment in the construction of all
that is to follow. An assertion of an equality, therefore,
between the external and internal conditions of life is in
the highest degree unphilosophical, since it is the over-
throw of this equality of values that the world has
been about from the very beginning of time until now.
When we add to this general consideration, the considera-
tion that in human life we are dealing with the most com-
plex and peculiar of all powers, one separated in develop-
ment by the largest space from the action of simple forces,
when we remember that development itself has little or
no light to cast on the first differentiations which consti-
tute a germ, and very little to cast upon that steady
increase of power by which the germ in its progressive
specialization becomes the plant, the animal, the man of
to-day, we shall scarcely be led, even for an instant or in
a single case, to turn our backs on this entire history of
the world, by levelling down in spiritual unfolding internal
with external causes, and so opening the problem of life
anew, as if nothing had already been done. To say that
a solution is historical, is to say that a vast amount of
difference has already appeared and been established and
confirmed in the agencies now involved, and that our
units are no longer equal units of force, but most unequal
units with variable and prodigious accumulations of power.
If we confront this view, which is rooted in reason, with
the facts of the social world broadly considered, we shall
see that the two correspond ; that no climate, no soil, no
geographical features, are uniformly associated with
human progress, or separated from it ; and that no exter-
nal conditions, except as they themselves are the expres-
sion of spiritual power or are making way before it, bring
any solution to human life.

8 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

It follows from this fact, that the personal powers are
the supreme powers to be considered, watched over, and
unfolded in human history, and that any effort which di-
rects itself primarily to the amelioration or modification
of outward conditions simply, can only be very partially
successful at any one time, and, in continuous effort, must
utterly fail. The problem of human well-being will yield
only to personal powers, and the fruit of ultimate labor
in all grades of life must be in behoof of these powers.

The method of Christ conforms to this principle in a
wonderfully complete and thorough way. All the extra-
neous things to which the eye of man is speedily directed
in seeking progress, or in convincing himself, in a more or
less illusory way, of its attainment, are wholly set aside.
This is not done by any formal statement, or w^ith any ex-
plicit denial of the service of secondary things, but by
turning the attention exclusively to primary things, and
shielding the eye from the confusion of cross-lights.
Wealth and rank are the ostensible signs of progress, and
are most universally associated with it in the popular
mind. They do not appear at all as means of influence or
marks of growth in the instructions of Christ. They are, in
theory, quietly passed by as accidents in life, while, in prac-
tice, they were left one side as blinding and confusing the
human mind, at the very best unaccustomed to single
vision. The eye was not only to be filled with light, but
first filled with light of a spiritual order. This method
was united in Christ with no asceticism, which is the op-
posite error, but was a concomitant of purely personal
power addressing itself to like powers. Wealth and honor
take part in the teaching of Christ neither as attractions
nor as repulsions ; they are simply indifferent to it.

When we approach knowledge, we have to do with

PERSONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 9

something much closer to the inner Hfe, yet capable of a
cold separation from it. The Jewish world was oppressed
in the time of Christ as very few communities ever have
been with the usurped functions of formal knowledge.^
The precepts of the Rabbis were omnipresent, and bur-
densome in the last degree. They were destructive of
independent thought, personal responsibility, and every
condition of individual life. They kindled and fed a con-
suming fanaticism, which no conditions of progress could-,
assuage or mollify. Christ, though naturally falling into
this class, completely separated himself from it in method,
and, lest the difference should be overlooked, drew atten-
tion to it in the plainest way. He instructs his disciples :
Be not ye called Rabbi, for one is your master even Christ,
and all ye are brethren. Call no man your father upon
earth, for one is your Father which is in heaven. Yet,
when he himself is called Rabbi, he does not return in an
irritable way to the injunction, and so make of it a formal
and minute rule. There is no more vigorous and search-
ing rebuke in language than that contained in his censure
of the spirit of proselytism, the winning of disciples to the
forms of faith. Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one
proselyte ; and when he is made ye make him twofold
more the child of hell than yourselves. The whole force
of Christ's words was to break down authority as external^
tyranny, and to build it again as liberty in men's thoughts.
They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and
lay them on men's shoulders ; but they themselves will not
move them with one of their fingers.

What wonderful caution — wonderful carelessness some
would think it — does Christ show in reference to organiz-
ing his disciples. At his death, organization, immediate

10 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

and prospective, was at its lowest terms. The narrow
spirit of his disciples in this respect had been constantly
repressed. It could get hold of no distinctions, much as
it sought them. When Christ was crucified they were
simply eleven men without leadership and without instruc-
tions, save that they were to teach all nations. Many facts
must have concurred, but this fact was doubtless a reason
among others why Judas fell away. There was nothing
which his narrow, selfish, prudent, and practical mind
could grasp, in wealth, in rank, in organization, or in well-
defined work even. What could such a mind do ? It
could not root in this light soil. Christ also, in the whole
course of his ministry, seems to have made no distinction
between men and women, or to have implied any inferiority
in women.

This proof of the personal element in Christ's instruc-
tions should, in illustration, be carried one step farther.
There were two things closely associated with his work
that might easily have overborne its fine intellectual
force : his miraculous power, and the presentations he
should make of the character of God. If there is any one
thing observable in the miracles of Christ, it is their
sobriety and restraint. Who shall give law to miracles, and
how rarely in the world's history have alleged miracles
been kept within the bounds of any wholesome purpose ?
It is plain that Christ, in every portion of his ministry,
was thoroughly aware of the stimulating and overpower-
ing character of this sense of the Divine Presence which he
bore with him, and constantly guarded himself and his
disciples against it. As a consequence of this personal
sobriety, all excitement was extinguished at once, and at-
tention was exclusively directed to strictly spiritual truths
and their spiritual enforcement. The unbelief neither of

PERSONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. II

the popular nor of the Rabbinical mind was encountered^
by power. When the disciples were exultant at their
earliest participation in this gift, they received the caution:
Rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you, but
rather rejoice because your names are written in Heaven.
Moreover, these supernatural manifestations were never
disassociated either in Christ or his disciples with the
rational, in some sense natural, conditions of faith — a state .
of mind concurrent with the facts. Some share of faith,
both in giving and receiving, was the ground of the gift.
If faith, the purely personal element, waned in the disciples, .
the power fell away with it. We find, therefore, the
disciples of Christ well-nigh as circumspect in the use of
this spiritual power as their Master, and never yielding
themselves up to its intoxication.

Purely personal development is easily lost in religion by
false views of the character of God, and of the conditions
of divine favor. Such opinions were so prevalent in the
time of Christ that religious faith wrought very little
change in personal character. The zealot simply intensi-
fied, in a more or less troublesome and unfortunate way.,
certain ill-grounded opinions and actions, and was very
likely to avenge himself for the unnatural restraints put
upon him in one direction by license in other directions.
Thus religion might easily make him a less lovable rather
than a more lovable man, one less ready rather than more
ready to be taken up into the true harmony of a spiritual
kingdom. Christ taught that the merciful should obtain
mercy; the pure in heart should see God ; the peace-maker
should be called the child of God. The whole force of
the Divine Presence, like light and heat, wrought for.
growth in personal qualities. There was no method of
approach to God, and no unity with him, which was not of
this personal, spiritual character.

12 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

Christ brought his disciples close within the circle of his
own personal qualities, gave them truth permeated with
feeling, and passing before their very eyes into action.
Personal qualities, therefore, found in the disciples
rapid unfolding. The presence of Christ w^as like the
sunshine of spring, in which change follows quickly on
change. Any thing subject to these stimulating influ-
ences must either grow or decay, and that at once. The
attractive force of Christ's presence we discover in the
eleven; its repellant power is disclosed in Judas. In a
less vigorous atmosphere the buds might not have pushed,
and the mildew might not have followed. By this divine
schooling of the thoughts and affections toward kimself,
Christ restored to th^ disciples a true conception of God,
till He became a Pervasive and Benign Presence, whose
clearest disclosure was in the Son of God. There was
nothing, therefore, in the character of God, as at length
apprehended by the disciples, to misdirect or repress their
personal life, but the reverse every way.

But this supreme importance of the personal element is
distinctly put by Christ in parables, illustrations, and
principles. The shepherd leaves the ninety and nine and
goes into the wilderness in search of the lost sheep. The
Pharisee, as he stands at prayer in the temple, has no
advantage over the publican. The humility of the one,
as contrasted Avith the pride of the other, makes an easy
way for itself to the heart of God. The widow with her
two mites bears off the divine approval. The life is more
than meat, says Christ, and the body more than raiment.
Not that which entereth into the man defileth him, but
that which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.

Thus absolutely, in every direction, and in every par-^
ticular, did Christ ground his instruction and his king-

PERSONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 1 3

dom on the personal element in its perfect freedom.
Here is a kingdom that can be borne anywhere by any
one, and can gather into itself all everywhere. It is as
colorless as white light, and yet it brings out the native
color of all things. It is organic, but organic after the
model of the highest life ; each molecule is bound by a
secret affinity to its own place and its own office, and to
every other molecule in its place and its office.

The part which this fact of a purely personal discipline
plays in the kingdom of Christ will be more clearly seen
if we contrast it with some of the aberrations of this truth
that have attended on the history of the Christian church.
An initial term in its theology is sin ; most of its doctrines
turn on this idea. Fundamental as this fact is in the
Christian system, it has easily been distorted, and made
to play a false part in life ; and that because it has not
been expressed in a personal way on a personal basis.

The sense of sin has been intensified vaguely, as if the
mind were to receive on this side its great recoil toward
God. It has been spoken of as against a perfect law and
an infinite God ; and things not sinful or sinful in a slight
degree, mere forms of action, have been made to bear an
immense load. The remedies of sin have become corre-
spondingly artificial ; and this strong feeling, obscured and
ill-directed, has been used to excite superstitious fears, to
push forward devotees in misconceived lines of action,
and to make the whole spiritual problem false and painful
in its rendering.

Because sin is so certain and so significant a fact, it is
the more needful that it be dealt with directly in its
individual forms and under its specific remedies. One
may be aware of the seeds of disease in his physical con-
stitution ; this is not an occasion for general alarm and

14 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

random effort, but for careful inquiry and precise action.
The problem of sin is not an abstract one, but one emi-
nently concrete, capable only of individual interpretation
and correction. In general alarm may be found a force
working against needful remedies and aggravating existing
evils.

It often happens that those who suffer most from the
maladjustments of society, fail to aid in their removal,
when the occasion is offered. The evil being misunder-
stood in its true sources, in the exact distribution of
wrongs and so in their real correction, simply maddens
the mind, — makes it blind, irritable, and exacting. There
is much to be regretted in the relation of labor and capital,
yet the laborer, misapprehending the extent and grounds
of the difficulty, may easily and often does spoil a promis-
ing experiment of cooperation by failing in that spirit of
endurance, forbearance, and trust, on which its success
depends. He covets prosperity, but is not able to supply
the personal terms on which it hinges.

The same is true of the sense of sin. Ill-defined, unex-
pounded in a personal way, it has left the mind eager and
fanciful, driven it into absurd efforts, and withdrawn it
from the only efforts which could be successful. It has
led the ascetic to overlook actual sins and to create facti-
tious ones, and so to pervert the functions of spiritual life
, by an inner fever of superstition. The nature of sin,
4 above most things, requires constant disclosure and daily
correction by personal and social experience. Sin lies in
the violation of those individual and social laws by which
the harmony of our life is reached. Sin is only seen cor-
rectly in the light of a clear idea of the integrity of the
individual and of society. Each man must understand
how various the changes and how manifold that must take

PERSONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 1 5

place in himself, before he can either come into entire self-
possession, or can contribute without disturbance his quota
to the common weal, or receive from it a full share of its
gifts. In other words, one must see clearly the Kingdom
of Heaven in its constructive constituents and the paths
leading to it, and at the same time be profoundly sensitive
of the guilt of maintaining or placing any obstacle in its
way. Sin is thus clearly defined by the want of conformity^
of the actual orbit of our lives to the perfect orbit toward
which God is pressing them. The whole problem of reli-
gion is first a personal and then a public one, and so Christ
treated it. The fulness of each life and the harmony of
lives, the harmony of lives and so the fulness of each life ;
this is the new, the enlarging and changeable, conception
which must guide our thoughts.

The direct and primarily personal form which Christ
gives to spiritual principles and the spiritual problem, is a '^
most significant feature of his method, as contrasted with
those of his own time, or with those habitual among men.
He is never for an instant bewildered b}^ forms offering
themselves in place of spirit ; or by conditions in advance
of the powers they address. He rules the world from its
only legitimate throne of authority, the soul of man ; and ^"
herein he discloses the permanence of his power.

CHAPTER II.

Rationality in the Words of Christ.

When we speak of a thing as rational, we understand
that it approves itself to our knowing powers in their nor-
mal action ; it is intelligible to them. Reason, as we are
now to use it, is an inclusive term for our intellectual fac-
ulties. We have various means of knowing, which give us
distinct results with changing degrees of certainty. These
faculties, taken singly and conjointly, acting in their own
fields and under their own laws, define the scope of our
knowledge. Reason also includes feeling, so far as feeling
aids the action of an intellectual power. The microscope
embraces not merely the lenses that transmit the light,
but the mirror also which reflects light on the object un-
der consideration. Our powers of comprehension are in
many ways dependent on our feelings, and to this degree
embrace them.

That which conforms to our aggregate powers of know-
ing is rational ; that which does not conform to them is
irrational. There has often been connected with religious
faith, though less now than hitherto, a prejudice against
reason. Religious dogmas have refused to submit them-
selves unreservedly to reason. If we use reason broadly,
as we have now defined it, this repugnance cannot be
justified. It arises partly from mal-judgment, and partly
from mal-purpose. Error is wont to be made up of these
two ingredients in variable proportions. There would
hardly seem to be any statements more self-evidently true

i6

RATIONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 1/

than these. Every thing that is to be known is to be sub-
mitted to the knowing powers. Every thing that is to be
done in a conscious and wise way, is to be done knowingly.
Knowledge and wisdom have one method of increase.

There are some simple qualifications rather than limita-
tions w^iich these first truths call for. There are many
things beyond our knowing faculties. These are of two
kinds: those intrinsically — tliat is, by very nature — be-
yond our knowledge, and those accidentally beyond it.
We may arrive at the second class of facts through the
testimony of others. To estimate and to accept the
testimony of others is a part of our own rational action,
and this indirect use of reason is as rational as its direct
use. It is not without reason, but by reason, that we put
ourselves, in suitable circumstances, under the guidance of
others, ourselves setting limits to it. What we accept on
the testimony of others must be in general harmony
with what we know directly; and in case of a real con-
flict, we are sure of an error on the one side or the other.
Our direct knowledge gives a law to our indirect knowl-
edge, for the very nature of knowledge and the standards
of knowledge are contained in our own powers of knowing.

The first class of unknowable things — those which lie
beyond the circle of our faculties — is transcendental to
us. We can have neither directly nor indirectly any
knowledge of these facts. This is precisely what is
meant by saying that they lie without the scope of our
powers. Reason is shown in simply recognizing this fact*
and in making no effort to transcend the limit.

With this understanding of reason and of its ofiRces, it
is impossible to see how any objection can be made to
the assertion that religious truths and all truths are
amenable to reason — are indeed the products of reason.

1 8 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

Certainly no rational objection can be made to the state-
ment, for that would be to take an appeal to reason
against reason. Rationalism must be the height of
reason and of religion also. Certainly no one will be
found willing that any doctrine held by him should be
called irrational. If any thing we hold is irrational, and
can be shown to be so, certain is it that sooner or later
some one will undertake this task, and, succeeding in it,
will disperse the belief, as sun-light absorbs a mist.

Only one thing can be said in resistance, and that is
that the alleged religious truth is irrational only in the
sense of transcending reason. But this means, if we
speak understandingly, that it transcends all knowledge,
since reason stands for our entire outfit of knowing powers ;
and so it becomes irrational to afifirm what we do not
know and cannot know. If the statement offered is one
which lies within the scope of the faculties, but outside of
their present action, and is thus appropriately referable to
testimony, it still cannot be inconsistent with a wise inter-
pretation of our experience. To grant this would be to make
our knowledge contradictory, and in the contradiction to
yield to inferior authority — to wit, that of testimony. One
must rely on his own discrimination, in the first instance,
as the ground of his belief in any one. Mere statement
carries with it no proof. If a man cannot trust himself in
the first steps of knowledge, he cannot in its second
steps. If, therefore, his own knowledge is contradicted,
not apparently but actually, by the assertions of another,
these cannot be accepted as a portion of his knowledge.
Nor is the relation altered, if we refer the inconsistent
assertion to Revelation. Our first empirical knowledge
is God's disclosure to us of truth, and no later afifirmation
can be in contradiction therewith, without tumbling
down the whole structure of knowledge.

RATIONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. I9

This assertion of the ultimate authority of reason is
strangely enough thought to be irreverential. Trust is
felt not to be complete unless it has a measure of blind-
ness in it. Faith is regarded as a resting on the unknown,
not a resting on the known. Man is placed in ref-
erence to God in an attitude of antagonism and con-
trast ; all that disparages human nature is thought to exalt
the Divine Being. This is a very feeble philosophy of sin,
and is no philosophy whatever of righteousness. Right-
eousness, right vision, right feeling, right action, are not
thrust upon us in our weakness or our wickedness by
divine power, but wrought in us, acting in conjunction
with divine wisdom and grace. The highest point of
spiritual light, that at which the work of God is most mag-
nified and his revelation made most clear, is the mind of
man, when the wisdom of God and the will of God are
reproduced within it. When man is most debased, the plan
of God, the grace of God, are most obscured. When man
is most exalted, the work of God is most completely
revealed. It is in the clear mind and pure heart that God
is most divinely active and most uncovered in his action.
There is no contrast but the closest union of the human
and the divine in the apprehension of truth. God is not
best represented by a priestess of Apollo, shaken by an
overpowering frenzy, but by a prophet whose sober
mind takes in a clear, calm, abiding vision. True rever-
ence, identifying the divine thing with the best thing
everywhere, bows lowest in worship in the noonday light
of truth.

But the very nature of truth leads us to the same con-
clusion. Truth, in all its forms, is a kind of vision, a .
breaking in of light within the mind itself. How plain is
this in our senses ! What a marvelous world without us

20 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

is addressed to something still more marvelous within us !
It is keen, inexplicable, and transforming sight and
insight and construction that disclose to us the world in
its brilliant light and gorgeous colors. Equally is it the
complicated powers of inteUectual vision that turn verbal
statements into the permanent truths of science, or into
the immutable laws of our social life. Nothing can do
this but vision. Many things may make ready for vision,
but nothing can take its place. Vision is reason, and
reason is vision ; and without vision we grope our way
under the government of some blind impulse. To come
out into a large place is simply to be where we can see,
feel, comprehend ; is simply to have gotten an outlook
from one or another of the high places of reason, and
to have been taken into the fellowship of reason.

None will deny that science, in spite of aU its limita-
tions, is having a very beneficial effect on theology. It is
helping to lay out afresh the highways and private paths
of that beneficent action which is binding anew the world
together in its manifold physical and social dependencies.
And what is this but giving a fresh and better definition
of righteousness ? While science cannot reach to the very
spirit with which the good action is to be done, it helps
us immensely in defining the action itself, and so in truly
holding within it the divine inspiration. While the right
method demands the right spirit, the right spirit de-
mands not less earnestly the right method. And the
harmony of the two is the harmony of reason. Reason is
a skilful cultivation of the plants of righteousness. Wis-
dom is never seen to be wiser than when it ministers suc-
cessfully, as in a garden, to various kinds of life which, in
their secret forces, are quite beyond it. Progress lies in a
perpetual enlargement of the action of reason.

RATIONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 21

There is one point of confusion in the relation of reason
to rehgious truth, arising from the reflex action of feeling
on apprehension. The fool hath said in his heart, There
is no God. Practical religionists express this truth by
saying : '^ If the Divine Spirit touches the hearts of men,
scepticism will speedily give way to belief." Feeling, it is
inferred, goes before belief, and the errors of belief must
be corrected by a renovation of the heart. The relation
here implied is a real one, but it only expresses an eddy
in the stream, and not the main current ; an eddy that is
itself the result of the current, and but slightly modifies it.

What is the real difficulty in the spiritual action of the
mind that is sceptical because scepticism is a partial
defence against light which it is unwilling to receive.?
Plainly this very thing, that under one or another pas-
sionate impulse it has refused to put conviction in the
foreground, and make conduct directly and completely
dependent on it. Such a mind, whether it is subjected to
the prejudices of belief or unbelief, has tampered with the
eternal constitutional order of its own processes, and now
requires that some simple truths should be thrown in upon
it in a forceful way, like a shock of electricity, to restore
its circulation. To do this is like putting a burning lens
in the sun-light, and so giving the heat concentration enough
to fire the fuel before it. This fact does not alter the laws
by which light and heat perform their constructive offices
in living tissue. When such a mind is awakened, it must
resume that normal action by w^hich truth is inquired into,
and truth only partially felt is cheerfully obeyed. Observe,
it is the fool who has said in his heart, There is no God ;
one whose intellectual and spiritual organization is suffer-
ing from paralysis. When we are inquiring after the
hygiene of the soul, we are not to identify the remedies

22 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

of disease with the means of health. Doubtless the
feeHngs often give direction to the thoughts, and
assume a certain government over them. This fact, in
the many mischiefs which arise from it, does not
alter the normal relation of the thoughts and feelings
to each other, but emphasizes it rather. The feelings are
always terms in the understanding of any broad, moral
question, because these questions are always dealing with
the feelings, and more or less terminate in the feelings.
But those feelings which are really able to elucidate the
moral problem are rational feelings, feelings that have
come under the previous government of the reason. The
mirror in the microscope that helps vision, is one that is
itself turned toward the light, and so can reflect light.

Our reason should be emotional, and our emotions
should be rational, and the only way to secure this result
is to place each and to maintain each in its constitutional
dependence. Sun-light must have heat before it can build
up the plant, but we cannot get heat without also increas-
ing the light ; the light, the heat, the actinic energy,
come together and spring from one fountain. Our emo-
tions may lose reason, and our reason may lose emotional
force. In either case the result is fatal ; in either case we
have salt that has lost its savor, fit only to be cast out and
trodden under foot ; in either case we have but one
remedy, to return to normal qualities and relations.

The perversion of belief by feeling is a fact that touches
the believer himself not less nearly than the sceptic. We
know how absurd and pernicious religious faith may become
in an unintellectual and emotional people like the negro
race; we know how blind and obstinate it may become in
unprogressive minds. This separation is liable in different
degrees to overtake religion in any place and in any person,

RATIONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 23

and so to result in that dangerous combination of intense
feelings and convictions insufficiently sustained and
guided by reason. Every measure of this division between
thought and feeling is spiritual disorganization, and equally
in the believer as in the unbeliever ; nor is the tendency
to it peculiar to either of them. The constitution of the
human mind is the divine constitution of the spiritual
world, and that constitution is, that the eye is to be single,
and the whole body is to be full of light.

This simple and primitive relation of the reason to all
spiritual action has been re-stated, in order that we may
see more clearly its complete recognition by Christ. The
intellectual atmosphere which Christ encountered was one
peculiarly full of the mist of unreason and conventional
opinion. A thousand things, with no foundation in the
constitution of man or society, had fettered the force of
religious convictions. The deep channels of truth had
been choked up with the prolific growth of a stagnant
pool. It was an aphorism that the Scriptures were like
water, the traditions like wine, and the comments of the
Rabbis like spiced wine. This submissive, dogmatic, and
irrational temper Christ encountered at once with pure
reason. One of the more justifiable of its requisitions
was the rigid observance of the Sabbath. Christ, repeat-
ing again and again his works of healing on the Sabbath,
met the rebukes he called out with the first truths of com-
mon-sense : What man shall there be among you that shall
have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath-
day, will he not lay hold of it, and lift it out ? How much,
then, is a man better than a sheep? Doth not each one
of you loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him
away to watering ? And might not this woman, being a
daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these

24 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath-
day ? He put a true estimate on the law of clean and
unclean things in the simplest and most direct way. Are
ye also yet without understanding? Do ye not yet under-
stand that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth
into the belly, and is cast out into the draught ? But
those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth
from the heart ; and they defile the man. For out of the
heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornica-
tions, thefts, false witness, blasphemies : these are the
things which defile a man ; but to eat with unwashen
hands defileth not a man. The clear, uncompromising,
rational way in which these statements are made is not
less remarkable than the statements themselves. They
flash broad day-light into the dark corners of men's minds.
They brush away like cobwebs the entire net-work of
thinking and reasoning prevalent among the Pharisees.

He encountered the Sadducees with a wide sweep of
thought, in meeting their denial of a future life. Have
ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God,
saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob ? God is not the God of the dead
but of the living. The greatness of the assertion — so runs
the argument — is preposterously reduced, if Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob are no more. He corrects at once those
who were desirous to refer the disasters of men in a direct
way to their sins. Suppose ye that these Galileans were
sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such
things ? I tell you nay : but except ye repent ye shall all
likewise perish. Here is pure rationalism. The extreme
follies of tradition he passes unnoticed, but he deliv-
ers direct and telling blows against its more defensible
positions.

RATIONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 2$

But attack in all ages is likely to be rational. The more
important inquiry is, What is the new method of construc-
tion and defence? When John the Baptist sent his dis-
ciples to inquire of Christ — Art thou he that should come,
or do we look for another? — he made no affirmation, he
offered no argument ; he kept them with him for a time
that they might see his works and hear his words, and
then charged them with the message : Go and show John
again those things which ye do hear and see : the blind
receive their sight, and the lame walk ; the lepers are
cleansed, and the deaf hear ; the dead are raised up, and
the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed
is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.

He did not require his own disciples to recognize at^
once his divine attributes. Not till he had been with
themi for a long time did he ask them, But whom say ye
that I am ? Even then the question seems to have been
put chiefly to confirm their faith by a direct confession.
Enclosed by the most narrow possible race-sentiment, na-
tional, and religious sentiment, he affirmed that the heirs
of his kingdom, should come from the East and the West,
the North and the South.

His prevalent and peculiar method of instruction was
parables. Evidently this form had some difficulties.
The truths so declared made but an obscure impression
on his disciples, accustomed as they were to a diverse
style of teaching. On one occasion his disciples said
unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest
no proverb or parable. What was the reason of this
method ? The grand power of the parable is that it does
not dogmatically deliver the truth, but must be inter-
preted in its inner significance by the mind to which it is
addressed. He that hath ears to hear let him hear, says

26 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

Christ. He spoke to them In parables because they were
so slow to use their powers, to see with their eyes and
hear with their ears. The parable is not the very truth ;
it only suggests it, and cannot be taken as a formal state-
ment in place of it. It must be discussed, and that, too,
spiritually. It is the shadow of a substance, the image of
the truth, and the outline must be seen and the relation
traced by each mind. The parable cannot be used with-
out understanding it ; it cannot degenerate into barren
dogma, nor into conventional phraseology. Christ was
willing somewhat to lock up the truth, that men might be
compelled to unlock it. Yet this concealment was, in
fact, the most thorough possible disclosure. This instruc-
tion is of the same order with that which we find in the
world ; the truths of science are not statements, but
things and events. No more rational appeal could possi-
bly be made to the comprehending powers of his disciples
than this of parables. They chafed under it simply
because it demanded consideration on their part. It was
no formal exhortation with which he gathered up the
parable, He that hath ears to hear let him hear.

Christ, in contrast with the Scribes, is said to have
taught with authority. Evidently we are to understand
by this the personal authority which immediately and
inevitably attaches to clear and coherent thought, — the
authority innate in reason. The authority of the past, in
all its forms of law, tradition, and comment, was with the
Scribes. The mind of Christ gave spiritual truths a new
impulse simply by the directness of his appeal to the
minds and hearts of his hearers. They were startled by
this manner of procedure as something revolutionary in
the religious world. It set aside personal authority with-
out so much as stopping to question it ; it assumed the

RATIONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 27

authority of reason without even drawing attention to
the fact.

But Christ went still farther. He gave the underlying
principles of reason clear statement. He likened his
words unto perennial waters flowing out of the mind
itself. He likened himself and his disciples also unto''/
light. No image is so fit as this image. Light has
but one character, one method, one supreme office. To
play the part of light is to carry with us revelation and
beget new action under it. Unreason is to reason the
same oppugnant state that darkness is to light. To
narrow reason at any point is to mar in its office the
regnant force.

Wisdom is justified of her children, is a formal state-
ment of the same truth. The wise thing commends itself
to the wise, and to them only ; the rational thing to the
children of reason, and to them only. Reason is a
condition of receiving truth, as well as of giving it. The
pearls of truth are not to be cast before swine. Those are
but swine who trample these pearls under foot, and that,
too, as a preparation for brute violence. If, therefore,
thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
John the Baptist is spoken of as a bright and shining
light in which men were willing to rejoice.

Where the claims of reason are put in a guarded and
general form, men may be slow to deny them ; yet there
is comparatively little of that religious faith which re-
fers itself to the words of Christ, that gives truth, as
addressed to the reason, unqualified adherence. Take, as
a single example, the doctrine of inspiration. Though it
has become a very vague doctrine by being held in so
many ways, and by being loosened again and again
at some new point of pressure, tlie religious mind is

28 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

not willing to yield it wholly. The anchor lias been
dragging these many days, yet the timid sailor does not
dare to weigh it, and commit himself to the winds — even
though they be the winds of heaven. Yet inspiration,
so far as it means any thing beyond the rational and
spiritual hold of truth on the human mind, is putting
authority in the place of reason, and blind obedience in
place of insight. Euclid does not need to be inspired, be-
cause it has the final' seal of manifest truth. It is only
doubtful things that can be helped by inspiration, and
timid minds that can be transiently sustained by it.
Profound spiritual truths, like the love of God and the
love of man, do not appeal less directly to our reason
than those of mathematics ; nor do they owe their au-
thority less to their inherent rightfulness. Spiritual truth
is luminous in itself, and does not wait on exterior
light. Correggio correctly conceived the facts when he
surrounded the Babe of Bethlehem with an intense
halo, casting light on all faces. The inexpugnable truths
of revelation are what they are, and do what they do,
by virtue of an inner force and divine nature, that
make themselves increasingly visible to every open and
clear eye. Calm vision is what men need, and vision
must be unconstrained. A command, a necessity, simply
alarm and confound vision. The confused pupil can not
see, because the teacher insists that he shall see, and see
at once. All the cardinal declarations of Scripture are
merely the frame-work of the spiritual universe of God,
and if we would truly understand them, we must see them
where they are, in the pathway of the Divine Reason as it
moves among us creatively. The mind should not feel
that it may stop short of vision, or that it needs any
thing beyond vision.

RATIONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 29

But it may be thought, if fundamental moral truths
must carry their own light with them, the same is not true
of historic facts. Historic facts do indeed rest chiefly
on testimony, and so we have always in them an element
of authority. But that element can not in the Scriptures
be inspiration. Inspiration is in this way put to an impos-
sible use. We meet w^ith two historical difficulties in the
canon as regards authority: its own authenticity and
the truthfulness of its writers. Of these two difficulties,
the first is first in order, is incomparably the greater,
and is beyond complete removal. Here we are and must
remain on uncertain grounds of reason. Inspiration,
if we allow it to be verbal, does not touch this difficulty,
does not take hold till this difficulty is overcome. We
have, then, by the doctrine of inspiration built an arch,
planting, as we allege, one foot of it on the granite
of the divine affirmation, and the other on the shifting
sand of historic criticism. The result is incongruous and
irrational. Our arch is seamed only the more quickly
and the more dangerously by virtue of its unequal foot-
ing. Inspiration can not do the work we wish it for, and
it can greatly embarrass the mind in doing its own
work. As regards moral principles it is a mere taper in the
sun-light of truth, perplexing and vexing the vision ; as re-
gards historic truth, it is no more effective than would be
the addition of a glossary in setthng the authority of a
work, Avhose chief difificulties were found in connection
with its authenticity. We burden ourselves with a super-
lative embarrassment, the assertion of exact and sufficient
truth in every statement of the Scriptures, and yet are not
able to establish the Scriptures themselves. Every thing
in the Word of God which presents a dif^culty to reason,
is made, by this doctrine of inspiration, to tell directly

30 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

against their authenticity, which is the fundamental point
of historic proof. It is far easier to accept the authority
of an uninspired than of an inspired book. We also over-
look in this doctrine the results of the fundamental fact in
reason, that of growth. Complete truth can not exist for
a finite mind, aside from the most simple and primary
statements ; and large truths can not be lodged in
language, aside from the variable understanding of those
who use it. Truths which transcend the writer and the
reader are as yet unrevealed and unrendered ; they are
not truths. Reason is the measure and the only measure
of truth ; when authority enters, it and truth take their
departure together.

The historic facts of the Bible have a more than ordi-
nary historic basis, while in them and over them shines
the purest spiritual light. They stand like a great char-
acter, majestic and real, through its historic force and
spiritual integrity.

What, then, is the occasion of this doctrine of inspira-
tion as something above and beyond reason ? Precisely
that which has been the occasion of an infallible pope and
an infallible church ; the reluctance with which men let go
of authority, and fall back on reason. It was another idol
set up over against these idols ; another blind movement
of unreason. Inspiration is the float on which the theo-
logical engineer builds his superstructure, before he gets
it in position and is ready to sink it to its true founda-
tions. It has become in the spiritual world that tradi-
tional element of menace and fear, which prevents our
searching the Scriptures through and through, till we pos-
sess them and are possessed by them. Inspiration pro-
ceeds on the idea that men are dull, and timid, and wilful,
and must be brought into ranks and marched in ranks,

RATIONALITY IN THE 'WORDS OF CHRIST. 3 1

marshalled by some single man, or council, or church.
God alone trusts his creatures with their powers. A stern
doctrine of inspiration has often been, to the sceptical
mind, the obdurate shell in whose cracking the kernel of
truth has been pulverized into dust. From no lips did
ever a more severe censure fall on the disposition to
proselyte men than from the lips of Christ, and the very
essence of proselyting is the substitution of coercive and
blind incentives for rational ones. If the mind is to be
left with the truths of the Bible, it must be left with
them. It is not a question of give and take, but of com-
prehension simply. Precisely in the measure in which un-
intelligible elements enter our faith, are we without foot-
ing in the spiritual world, and are made dependent, w^e
know not on what under-current of remote forces. We
may no more set aside one portion of our divine outfit in
faculties than another ; no more suspend reason by a doc-
trine than contradict our senses by a dogma, like that of
transubstantiation. Our life is one, and must be main-
tained and ripened in its harmony and freedom. It is
this fulness and concord of our faculties that Christ comes
to give us. What we do against reason, we do against
the completeness of God's work. Not till we have long
been with Christ will he ask us. But whom say ye that I
am ? And even then one may speak for a dozen, and
that one not half understand what he himself says. The
ultimate problem is to see and to love and to live ; the
germ is vision, a guidance into all truth.

It is to be regretted that a statement of the order just
made should be regarded as an attack, even an eager and
acrid attack, on revelation. Its intention is quite the
reverse. Inspiration, so far as it signifies any communica-
tion of truth that either in substance or form transcends

32 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

human apprehension, cannot issue in revelation. Revela-
tion is the reverse of this, to wit, the perception of the
truth according to its own nature as the truth. This is a
simple process, embarrassed only by any thing extraneous
to it. If we distinguish on the one hand the external
conditions of the sacred writer, and on the other his
own insight, the Spirit of Truth present with 'him, both
must concur in apprehension. So far as he misses this, he
misses the truth, both for himself and others. There is
in this view not the slightest objection to the presence of
the Divine Spirit, but to the idea that its presence issues
in something less than insight. Insight, we must insist,
is the highest product of the Spirit, and that insight is
insight under the laws of insight, and to be used by other
minds simply as insight. In the calcium light the com-
bustion of the two gases owes its brilliancy to the glowing
lime ; the mind of the inspired writer is the seat of that
concurrent action whose product is revelation. Any ab-
normal action confuses revelation itself, and con-
fuses our use of revelation. What we affirm is, that
revelation and reason do not miss each other, but that
they concur at one point, — apprehension, knowledge,
truth. Revelation is not to displace reason but to aid it,
and it can only aid it by coming freely under its law. If
it sets up another law, it brings embarrassment and con-
flict. The inspiration of the Almighty giveth — what? —
understanding.

It may be a matter of surprise that those who most
freely use reason often strive most determinedly to re-
strain its use in others ; that they put down reason with
reason. This action, if closely analyzed, seems to arise
not so much from a distrust of reason, as from a mistaken
trust in it. These persons imagine that the processes of

RATIONALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 33

reason are more obvious and certain than they really are ;
and that appropriate emotions and actions flow from them
almost by necessity. They thus think it right to require
of others their own convictions. A Calvin identifies in-
tegrity in conduct and lucidity in thought, and makes his
own action a standard of both. What is wanted under
these circumstances is not less reason, but more reason ;
not less confidence in reason, but a wiser confidence in it.
The logical process, which is only the central line of move-
ment in thought, is often taken for the whole broad stream
of knowledge. All the outlying parts of the broken and
extended river determine its current, and so do all the
emotional experiences of the man define for him his lines
of conviction. Yet, as in the obscure flow of the river
there prevails but one force — that of gravitation, so in the
more complicated movements of mind there is but one
law — that of reason. We cannot admit this law fully,
save as w^e fully admit its condition, which is freedom.
Experience is God's teacher for men, and it belongs to us
to offer only a modest assistance in the schooling of the
world.

Says that honored man, Professor Austin Phelps, in a
discussion of future retribution : " The doctrine has an
intense severity which is abhorrent to some of the pro-
foundest instincts of our nature. The glare of it scorches
the natural eye. We instinctively turn from it with con-
sternation." There is no natural eye which is not meant
to be an organ of vision, and which, rightly used, is not an
organ of vision. There is no antithesis more fatal than
one between our powers and God's revelation to those
powers. The power and the revelation must forever meet
in one result — truth. A conflict of the sort here implied is
simply chaos in the spiritual universe, and the convulsions

34 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

of thought must proceed freely till order and peace reign.
We may wait on the future for knowledge, we may strug-
gle for it now ; one thing we may not do : affirm disorder
to be order, and the frozen waves of our own ruffled
thoughts to be the rock of truth. That which repels
our profoundest feelings is not yet understood by us ;
that which is confusion is not the divine problem
solved ; that which is inchoate is not creation. If
there is any one thing notable in the words of Christ,
it is a simple, direct, ever-returning appeal to reason. The
truths of reason may at times be too profound for us, but
we may be sure that they are there, and that when they
are disclosed they will lie serenely in the light, like all that
have gone before them.

CHAPTER III.

Spirituality in the Words of Christ.

The word idea is employed in its most general sense
to express any intellectual state. One of the most ob-
servable and remarkable facts in the life of man is the
degree in which he is governed by certain ideas, which
constantly return to him. These ideas involve a circuit
of feelings which support them, and are strengthened by
a daily experience ordered under them. The ideas which
rule different classes of minds have very different forms
and very different degrees of extension. They may
belong to a certain grade of civilization ; they may per-
tain to a nation, or to a community within the nation;
they may be the product of some one type of religious
faith ; or connected with some one class or some one pro-
fession ; or they may be in a measure peculiar to an
individual. The ideas which govern a miser are of this
last order.

Ruling ideas are, however, greatly aided by the con-
currence of many minds in them, and the precise phase
of the spiritual forces dominant in any individual is a
composite result of the interior tendencies and the
exterior influences that have been joined together in the
formation of these ever-returning ideas. A dominant
conception of the things desirable, no matter of how little
worth the things themselves may be, and of the method
of their attainment, is a spiritual fact, and marks a spir-
itual government in every man. Even the savage is not

35

36 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

left wholly to his appetites. He begins to form opinions
and to feel the constraint of opinions, and every step in
civilization involves an increased transfer of ruling forces
from the appetites which possess the body to the ideas
Vvdilch possess the mind. These ideas admit of but slow
modification, and though occasionally set aside, are sure
to return again in continuous action. They express the
balance of convictions and feelings that has gotten hold
of the mind ; they acquire the force of habit, and increas-
ingly exclude all opposed and foreign considerations.
The ignorant and savage mind is not relieved from the
government of ideas by the narrowness of its ideas ; they
are only the more irresistible by virtue of this fact. A
stupid superstition is more dlf^cult to displace than a
more rational conviction.

There is something marvelous in the energy with which
one type of thought comes to prevail in a church. Every
one is challenged at the outer gate, and no one finds
admission who has not the watchwords of the place.
Once admitted, every mind is acted on in the same way ;
conventional influences concur with primitive tendencies
in stamping deeper and deeper the prevalent ideas. A
more or less distinct sense of opposition between churches
serves to check the transfer of alien impressions, that
might otherwise modify the ruling conceptions. Species
are in this way formed in the intellectual and spiritual
world, and their types are as carefully guarded against
change as in the vegetable or in the animal kingdom.

Men are thus everywhere governed by ideas, with their
afBlIated feelings, which have in one way or another won
possession of the mind, and whose present power is very
little affected by any want of rational grounds in their past
growth. These ideas are an existing dynasty, whos-e

SPIRITUALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 37

authority is not overthrown by a simple denial of its
legitimacy. The rank and file of an army may have every
reason to revolt ; physical strength is wholly on their side :
yet there may be such a bondage of traditional ideas
among them that a few officers are able to rule them in a^
most tyrannical way. When they do revolt successfully,
it is under some new phase of a prevailing idea. An
article recently appeared in the Nineteenth Century, writ-^
ten by one in the military service of Austria. It endeav-
ored to show that England, made negligent by her insular
position, has overlooked the rapid progress of the past
few years in military science on the Continent, and, as a
consequence, is utterly unable by force of arms to protect
herself and her possessions from invasion. The simple,
undiluted military idea of force, as the only defence of
society, was applied throughout the article with the most
depressing effect. It seemed impressed on the mind of
the author that each European nation stands on a precipi-
tous incline, and can maintain its position only by untiring
and watchful exertion. Force settles all things, and must
soon settle them to the disadvantage of the weak. The
relation of Canada to the United States was adduced
among many other examples of weakness in the British
Empire. The assertion was that it would be easy for the
United States at any time to occupy that province. The
implication of the military idea was, that we were likely^
at any time, to enter on so promising an undertaking
with corresponding gain to ourselves and loss to England ;
that the notion of conquest was sure at some time to take
possession of us, and that the possibility of defeat ought
to be immediately present to the English mind.

The ideas of commercial advantage, of justice, of social
well-being and* good-will, which are becoming every day

38 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

more and more effective forces in the relations of these
two countries, and already quite outweigh the military
sentiment, seemed, in the conception of the writer, to sink
out of sight in the presence of the impulse of military
honor, and the delight of its gratification, The problem

was discussed as if the people of the United States were a
kind of predatory tiger, lying in wait for the favorable
moment to make a spring ; as if no gratification in the
long run could be greater with them than that of inflict-
ing injury under the general notion of national honor.
The article was a startling disclosure of the presence of a

Kthoroughly cultivated and widely influential class in so-
ciety, governed by ideas as rude and barbaric as those of
Genghis Khan.

That the mihtary idea still remains deeply rooted in
Europe is only too true, and its retrogressive and destruc-
tive character is vividly shown when the great English
nation, under a stern array of facts, is exhorted to turn
aside from its many undertakings at the ends of the world,
and adequately arm itself against the Christian nations of
Europe. If nations stand on such an incline as this, not
only is it precipitous, it is made more so by each new effort
at adjustment. Preparation for war is no protection against
war, for the preparation is universal ; and after each effort
all resume the old relations with added strain and danger.
The possibility of escaping such ideas as these, and put-
ting in their place more enlightened and beneficent ones,
is the possibility of progess. But men are ruled by ideas ;
the military impulse is but an idea ; and they may there-
fore be ruled by increasingly noble and just ideas. If the
convictions and feelings incident to good-will can be made
forceful in their thoughts, all external expressions will con-
form to them and confirm them with wonderful rapidity.

SPIRITUALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 39

Here, then, in ideas is the truly constructive centre of
human society. He only builds for the future, who
establishes, intensifies, and purifies the appropriate ideas.

Every one who is gifted with a philanthropic temper
understands this, and is struggling for the government, in
his own mind and in the minds of others, of those ideas
which are able to reconstruct and bear forward human
life. Men are possessed and controlled by ideas, and so
the fitness, breadth, and beneficence of these ideas become
the one comprehensive and significant fact.

Fine art is a question of ideas and forms ; a question,
therefore, of the spirit and the letter. Genius in art
flashes out on the side of the idea. All constructive spir-
itual forces in the spiritual world show themselves as spirit,
the spirit that maketh alive. Yet we know how inseparable
are the two elements, spirit and form. While the letter
may kill the spirit, it is none the less the letter that the
spirit makes alive. While the dead letter is all that is left
when the spirit sinks out of sight, it is the living letter
that is present when the spirit rises into light. The spirit
has no effective force save under the form that the letter '
gives it.

Any spiritual movement is at once disclosed, therefore,
in its character by its treatment of forms and ideas. A
true movement approaches forms only through ideas, and
carries forward ideas at once into appropriate forms.
Herein the method of Christ is preeminent. He is spirit-
ual ; he deals directly with ideas. Yet he pushes every
idea into action, and treats every action under its own
idea. Such a position, consistently taken, is the only
universal one, and the only one universally effective.

This spiritual method starts with the individual and
not with society. The primary factor is the individual.

40 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

Only as the individual first makes society, does society
react on and make the individual. Christ commences
with the earliest germs of our composite life in the spirit
of man. The relation of the forms of religion — even the
wisest and the most direct — in the discipline of man, is
clearly put in the declaration : The Sabbath is made for
man and not man for the Sabbath. Christ came eating
and drinking, and so taught his disciples that the religious
life lies even more in the wise use of liberty than in its
wise renunciation. This is a truth which the early Church
lost sight of, and which the Church, even down to our own
time, has especially misapprehended. Men have striven
to save the spiritual, as a dethroned king is saved, by
flight, rather than to win for it its true sovereignty over
physical things, intellectual powers, and social conditions.
Our Saviour declares that the pure in heart shall see
God. We lose the full force of the words by interpreting
them as if some Visible Presence were referred to, purity
of heart being a condition of admission to it. Is not the
Idea rather that a pure heart is a primary medium of
vision, by means of which the soul is made cognizant of
the Pervasive Spiritual Presence about us ? The doctrine
of a spiritual life, complete within itself by virtue of its
own clear and controlling conceptions, is nowhere more
distinctly put than in the words of Christ to Nicodemus :
Ye must be born again. The habitual ideas of a compara-
tively upright mind were brushed away by the assertion,
as quite inadequate to lead up to a new life, for the life in
Christ was emphatically to be a new life. The mind must
be born into a realm of new ideas ; must be born again.
What these ideas are, is brought before us in the Lord's
Prayer: Our Father who art in Heaven. Hallowed be
thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in

SPIRITUALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 41

earth as in heaven. They are the fatherhood of God, and
the coming of a social state in which this fatherhood shall
find full expression. Certainly none will deny that these
ideas, comprehensively understood and passionately re-
ceived, would be able to beget and nourish a life of such
scope and felicity, that we have as yet only caught remote
glimpses of it. This life would be a pure spiritual life, as
it would be habitually maintained by the highest spiritual
conceptions. In proportion as this idea of a Pervasive
Presence of Love in the world, and of its power to recon-
struct all things for itself, holds the thoughts and calls
out the affections of men, are the conditions present for a
spiritual kingdom.

Social progress, therefore. Is as spiritual in its ultimate
terms as is individual growth. There is no union of men,
save through the affections ; and there is no harmony
of the affections, save as they are gathered by one
comprehensive idea under one law. If there is no
supreme idea, no common and supreme relation present
to men's minds, there can be no synthesis in thought or
action. With or without theism, the spiritual kingdom
must be built by a supreme faith and conviction of some"'
sort. It must first find a centre in men's minds, that it
may later find It in their lives. The simple desirabihty of
union is not the basis of union, this must be found In the
living convictions which can sustain it. If love is not the
rational basis and frame-work of the universe under its
truest conception, no effort to make It so on the part of
men can prosper. We cannot love men, save as we are
bound to them under rational ideas, whose natural product
Is love. The particular cannot rule the general. The
general must call out and sustain the particular. We
may wish each philanthropist all possible success in bind-

42 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

ing men together, but the fundamental condition of suc-
cess remains a coherent idea whose direct issue is the law
of love, the law which Christ put in the foreground as the
command : Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. It is
out of spiritual ideas that spiritual life proceeds ; out of
the life of God that our life flows ; in his life that our
lives move and have their being. Without the sustaining
idea of a Supreme Rational Presence in the world, pure
and pervasive love finds no sufficient support. " Certain
it is that the new epoch will not conquer unless it be
under the banner of a great idea, which sweeps away
egoism, and sets human progress in human fellowship,
as a new aim, in place of restless toil, which looks only
to personal gain." ^

Two limitations crowd on the spiritual development of
man. Perfect love is not applicable, save between perfect
beings. The ignorance, debasement, and vice of men put
corresponding restraints on trust and affection between
them. Rational love can not lose sight of excellence, and
is ultimately for excellence. We are to love our neighbor
as we love ourselves ; and we cannot love our own lives,
save as they are seen to move toward a comprehensive
and permanent ideal. The law of love, then, can find in-
cipient action only as a spiritual idea of each life, and of a
kingdom uniting all lives, is present to call it forth. If any
one seeks a " synthesis of humanity," he must not merely
recognize the two laws of Christ, he must possess, deeply
implanted in his thoughts, those conceptions which sustain
these laws, and give them movement in the mind. Love
for our lives such as they now are, love for our fellow-men
such as we find them, viewed under the ever-returning

* " History of Materialism," Lange, vol. 3, p. 361.

SPIRITUALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 43

condition of deep division and petty strife, can only fol-
low from some profound truth that is passing into the
light and carrying all hearts with it. The spiritual wis-
dom and power of Christ are found in the antecedent
ideas he holds in his own mind, and plants in the minds
of others as the germs of life. We are not called on to
draw our inspiration from a remote ideal, which gains no
expression in existing facts, but from an over-mastering,
spiritual Presence, pushing the ideal toward us, and push-
ing us toward the ideal. When the ugly facts just about us
block the way, we have not an ideal and a real wrestling
with each other, but the inner life of the real is seen to
be moving toward the ideal, and to be at one with it.

The second limitation is that men never conceive the
law of love clearly, save in the degree in which they obey
it. The object of Christian truth is to organize men under
this law, and yet it is plain that it has accomplished this
result only very partially, even with those who have ac*
cepted it. Character is Christian character only as it is
more lovable than all other character. Yet Christian
men have not judged their own characters or the charac-
ters of others in this way. The true standard by which
to criticise any phase of faith is the human synthesis
wrought by it, the attractive force of its ultimate units,
the organic spiritual powers that draw its members to-
gether, the wisdom and grace of the ideas that rule
them, the kind of kingdom and the strength of the king-
dom in which they are coalescing.

Men seem to think that salvation is an invisible fact of
some order to be taken on faith. It is rather a supremely
visible fact, open to the most common and to the most
scrutinizing observation. It is the fact of a new organic
force in the individual shown in increased integrity — as

44 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

inner unity, — and increased love — as outer po^^er. It is a
fact which we must all feel, therefore, as we approach it ;
it was the fact that made the early Church so conspicuous.
The magnet is a magnet because it has the attractive
power of one. The spirituality of the method of Christ
is seen in his presentation of appropriate ideas, and in his
reliance on the continuous extension of these ideas within
themselves. Nor are they ideas which rest in the mind
of man simply ; they gather up rather the whole force of
the spiritual universe, and bring it to work with the mind of
man. Man aids in a work of which he is by no means the
author. He is not called on to make a kingdom, but to
learn to play his part in a kingdom that is in the processes
of construction.

The significance of the great increase of emphasis laid
hy Christ on the passive virtues, meekness, patience, for-
giveness, as contrasted with the active virtues, courage,
self-assertion, justice, is apparent in this connection. We
no sooner forecast the future broadly, we no sooner come
under the government of an omnipresent constructive idea,
than we find occasion for patience, that we may not be
unduly fretted by delay ; for forgiveness, that we may cut
short none of the forces which work for success ; for meek-
ness, that we ourselves may enter with a chastened
and obedient spirit into this kingdom of harmony and
love. The passive virtues are called out by the presence
of overshadowing ideas, and they help, as a gentle provi-
dence, to nourish all the spiritual powers of every human
soul. Though our Lord was in no degree destitute of the
bold, active virtues, his unusual lustre of character was
found in the passive virtues, his power to rebuke adverse
influences by waiting on their natural correctives. The
active virtues are to the passive ones what rashness is to

SPIRITUALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 45

wisdom, what boldness is to love ; they hold but a small
portion of that moulding power by which great events are
slowly nourished into life. A main point in the Kingdom
of Heaven is how to escape the weakness of its inception,
how to reduce the first strain of its imperfections, how to
teach the strong to bear the burdens of the weak. The
active virtues make haste to overcome evil, but they expect
to do it Avith evil ; the passive virtues are content to abide
by the slow remedial measures of the good itself. A
supreme spiritual idea, brooding over all impulses, begins
at once to call out the passive virtues, and to hold in
check the active ones, — to become a creative spirit.

The Churches which have sprung up out of the life of
Christ have especially fallen off from his spirituality.
This has been due to the disproportioned force of forms
and of visible things over the minds of men. The spir-
itual life must renew itself many times and in many ways
before it can win its own. A Church has fitness only as it
gives the best immediate discipline. It stands in no closer
relation to the Kingdom of Heaven than any one
university to the world of letters. The universal, his-
torical Church, if we attempt to mean thereby any thing
more than the unity of the Kingdom of Heaven foreshad-
owed in the pure thoughts of pure men, is a misleading
fancy, the scope of whose import is sought in external
facts, not in internal life. No matter in what Church-
fellowship our Lord may be found, his language will still
be : I have sheep which are not of this fold.

If we look upon the Kingdom of Heaven as that com-
plete spiritual life which is to prevail on the earth, we
cannot say that its centre is to be found in any existing
organization, that its progress will necessarily reduce
these organizations to any one type, or that they will act

46 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

otherwise than as movable centres ready to be thrown
into higher relations with each other, as the rhythmic
movement takes more complete possession of them. It
is not the purpose of spiritual unity to abolish individual
diversities, but to hold them in more immediate ministra-
tion to each other. Our only safe assertion is, that as the
inner force of spiritual life increases, it will take the place
of the unity of external methods and rites, and these,
both as divisive and unitive agencies, will be reduced to
their lowest terms. The coherence of all spiritual life in
successive ages and in diverse persons and places, is an
idea that cannot receive too much emphasis, because it is
that inner organizing idea which watches over its own ful-
filment. But this is a fact which, far from demanding any
immediate expression, or perchance any expression, in
external organization, is rather present to our thoughts for
the very purpose of reducing the conflict between existing
Churches and existing tendencies, and giving an inner
ground of union only the more apparent by virtue of the
diversities of persons, times, and places. It is not oneness
but unity, not sameness but harmony, not constraint but
liberty, not quiescence but movement, that are sought for.
The equilibrium of the Kingdom of Heaven is a dynamical,
movable one ; its centre masters all subordinate centres
by their activity and its own activity. We can only rise
to a Church universal by rising quite above any one
Church, and yet by not losing any Church in its own
sphere.

The spirituality of the idea which Christ bore with him,
and strove to implant in its pure form and with its appro-
priate governing forces in the minds of his disciples, is
especially manifest in his presentation of his relation to
God on the one hand, and to his followers on the other.

SPIRITUALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 47

When Philip said to him, in those last hours of com-
munion in which the eleven were seeking, and yet how
blindly, for the guiding ideas of truth : Lord, show us the
Father and it suffices us, Jesus said unto him : Have I
been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known
me, Philip ? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,
and how sayest thou then show us the Father? Here
was an outcry of the senses. Philip would fain see the
truth. He longed for an open door by which he could
enter bodily into the kingdom.

The words of Christ wholly set aside the notion that
the Kingdom of Heaven is to turn, or can be made to turn,
on any new visible effects ; that any further revelation was
at present possible. An Invisible Presence was already
present in visible things, and must be found there, or not
found at all. The supreme idea, that of a Heavenly
Father, had expressed itself in Christ ; had been worded
forth again and again by Christ. That idea, in its own spirit-
ual order, must take possession of the minds of his dis-
ciples, and rule them. Otherwise Christ had spent three
years with them to no purpose. This clinging of the
minds of men to a sensible manifestation, is like that
which binds timid birds to the nest, or inexperienced
swimmers to the shore. This spiritual lesson had a re-
hearsal in Peter. He was bold enough to venture on the
water, but not bold enough to walk on it. Christ was an
open door to his disciples, by which they entered the
world of spiritual ideas ; saw them as he saw them, and
felt them as he felt them.

The same relation is taught in another form, when he
assures his disciples that it is expedient for them that
he should go hence, but that he will pray the Father, and
he shall give them another Comforter, that he may abide

48 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

with them forever, even the Spirit of Truth. Every
supernatural manifestation, every special revelation, is to
be regarded as an effort to help forward weak and imma-
ture minds onto a truly spiritual footing. The physical
presence of Christ came to occupy too exclusively the
senses of his disciples, and so got in the way of his words.
It displaced that inner vision of truth, which was the real
revelation of God. It became needful, therefore, that
their training should be altered, that they should be led
to a deeper, stronger, more self-reliant grasp of the truth
by the very Spirit of Truth.

The bold figure in which Christ asserts that his disciples
are to eat his flesh and drink his blood, is but a striking
way of insisting on the fact that they must become full
partakers of his ideas, and so of his life. The grossness of
the image was fitted to save the mind from any literal use
of it, and the force of the image from any misapprehension
of it. Yet the truth was not quite won, nor the error
quite escaped, and so men traveled by the obscure road
of transubstantiation and consubstantiation up to the
light.

These shreds of thought, which seemed for a long time
to the disciples but cobwebs floating in the air, visible
only for short distances, and from particular positions,
were the living filaments of the new spiritual growth,
which was to root itself in all minds, transform all hearts,
and lead men at length to understand that the King-
dom of Heaven is within them, the plants of righteousness
having no other soil than the human soul. The proof of
the Messiahship of Christ is essentially for us what it was
for his disciples. They were called in one way to trans-
late the visible into the invisible, and we are called to do
the same thing in a somewhat different way. Those who

SPIRITUALITY IN THE WORDS OF CHRIST. 49

can make the translation will believe in the divine message,
no matter to what generation they belong ; and those who
can not make the transfer, share neither the vision nor the
belief. Historic proof is nothing, and the vision of the
senses is nothing, save as they are accompanied by the
insight of the spirit into'the spiritual message. The mean-
ing of the cypher saves the cypher from being meaning-
less. In the degree in which we see the transcendent force
of the message, will our difficulties about the messenger
fall away. The highest truth in all departments is self-
verified. Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast
thou not known me, Philip ?

The ease with which the mind dwarfs a truth as yet too
large for it, is seen in the cunning mechanism of law
which theology has built up between man and God — a
mechanism so difficult of management, that neither man
nor God nor both conjointly can handle it without terrible
loss. A chief office of Christ is to attain a position in
which he can bear this loss, and make this needful sacri-
fice. We search the words of Christ in vain for the
expression of such a purpose. He is the revelation of
God, he is a reconcihation of ideas ; he who hath seen him
hath seen the Father.

The parable of the prodigal is the most explicit, the
most beautiful, the most purely spiritual exposition of
the relation of man to God. It was only necessary that
the prodigal should come to himself, and so return to the
Father. The mistake was one of convictions and feelings.
The elder brother may well stand for the theological
temper. He felt that more difficulties and delays should
have been put in the way of the prodigal, that it was not
fair to the righteous to make so easy the return of the un-
righteous. Here was a righteousness that had gotten an

$0 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

advantage against the sinner, which it did not quite like
to yield.
J Men are spiritual in this sense, they are ruled by ideas,
and the more so as they advance in intellectual life.
Christ would make them spiritual in this sense, that he
would put them under the government of the truest,
broadest, purest idea, — the idea on which alone the spir-
itual universe can rest, that of a Supreme Pervasive
Reason. Reason can no more be malignant than it can
be negligent, no more be concessive than it can be exact-
ing, but must struggle for the synthesis of all thoughts
and all hearts under its own constructive law of love — love
which is the inner force of reason. It is plain that if such
an idea can reign in men's minds, it will bring strength,
harmony, peace ; and that In the degree in which this
idea is wanting, these also must be wanting. This is the
secret of Christ and the secret of the Kingdom of
Heaven. We shall not easily apprehend how great a
thing this is : that Christ should at once and fully master
the problem of human hfe, should offer no false motives,
should enter on no partial methods, should look forward
to a spiritual unity of the race, and should bring into the
foreground the ideas which can alone be productive of it,
and which must underlie it when It is accomplished. To
see Christ in this relation and in this attitude is to
recognize him as the Master of Life, is to know him as
Philip should have known him.

CHAPTER IV.
The Law of Truth.

The law of truth is the fundamental fact in rational
life. Truth, as a law, implies the power to inquire into
things, to understand them, and to conform our action to
our apprehension of them. To do this is the nature and
province of reason. Physical events are interlocked with
mental life, and the two move on together by virtue of
the law of truth, the power of the mind to understand
things and so to adapt itself to them, and them to itself.
All parallelism between the two movements, that of
physical events and of spiritual activities, is secured and
maintained by the law of truth. Facts come under the
government of reason only by comprehension, and reason
submits itself to facts without injury only by compre-
hension. The point of contact between the two is
always this of knowledge, and the fitting line of action is
always in conformity with the truth. The law of truth is
as broad as the reason, and nothing that is present to our
conscious, spiritual life is present under any other con-
dition.

We do not at once see how much is involved in this
law of truth. Truth, as a law, does not imply mere facts
of any and all sorts, but facts that stand in definite and
permanent relations to each other and to us. A dis-
closure to reason is not one to the eye merely, but to the
mind also. The mind has no part in the revelation till a
principle of order is discovered. What science really

51

52 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

shows, and what it is justly so proud of showing, is that
this second and greater disclosure to the mind of order is
as universal as the disclosure to the senses, and that there
is, therefore, nothing present to us anywhere in the
Universe as sensitive beings which is not also present to
us as rational beings. This surprising assertion our
increasing knowledge is making good every year. Local
and feeble as seems to be our personal presence, we lay
down directions of action which the near and the remote,
the secret and the subtile forces of the world fully sustain,
and we shape conclusions which far-off events in the
Universe come forward to support. That is, mind, as a
comprehending and voluntary power, is in extended har-
mony with the world as a fixed and unfolding series of
events ; and the inference is ready to follow, that this har-
mony of being and reason is universal and complete.

This certainly is a startling fact, and in some sense puts
man in possession of the world. This absolute and ex-
tended harmony between things which do not seem to
include or involve each other, is the one great fact of the
Universe. Mind does reflect the Universe, and the Universe
does reflect mind, and the two are united under the law
of truth. Either the two have been shaped together by
mind under one rule of reason, or the two have grown up
together as correlative facts of the general order ; either
this harmony is rooted in reason, or reason is rooted in this
harmony. To take the latter view is to decide in favor of
the blind, the instinctive, the irrational, as the final con-
structive term in the Universe, as against the conscious,
the intelligent, the rational. If we do this consistently,
the reason with which we close our development will be
of no higher order than that with which we open it ; the
apparent concurrence of thoughts and things will still rest

THE LAW OF TRUTH. 53

in the nature of things and not of thoughts ; man will be
but one thing among things.

When men reflect how absolutely universal the intel-
ligible is, with what a net-work of relations it embraces
the world, they are not willing to refer these results to
blind physical causes, till they have endowed these causes
with some of the attributes of intelligence. Hence it
becomes a favorite method with those who regard the idea
of development as the ultimate explanation of all things,
to confound the terms in this equation of truth, giving to
nature the attributes of mind and to mind those of nature.
They solve this wonderful relation by perverting its facts.
They start the process by a vigorous setting aside of mind
in its normal powers, they continue it by a subjection of
mind to matter, they end it by an obscure transfer of the
pilfered powers of mind to matter. At every step they
contradict our rational experience, and close the move-
ment by locating intelligence in things where its presence
is least apprehensible, and denying it in a corresponding
measure to mind where its presence is most apprehensible.
The controversy seems to resolve itself into the questions :
Whether what we know as reason, intelligence, has its ulti-
mate seat in matter or in mind ? Whether its later mani-
festations in mind, to which alone our consciousness
extends, are secondary and incidental, or, in the order of
reason, are primary and supreme ? or, again, Whether the
relation of time is the superior relation, or that of reason ?
If the problem is to be understood, the human mind can-
not for very long be so untrue to itself as to satisfy itself
with an explanation that stultifies the explanatory power,
and abolishes the explanatory process as one of reason.
Certainly construction, as an instinctive movement of in-
teUigence, is less intelligible than the idea of conscious

54 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

construction, from which alone we derive our notion of
intelligence.

The law of truth, whether it arises from the productive
force of mind or the productive force of matter, is the
peculiar law of reason. The two are commensurate. So
far as they are intelligible relations reason may go, and
reason can go no farther. As, however, there are such re-
lations in the entire Universe, reason has the range of the
Universe.

Nor is the relation of truth to our emotions less com-
plete. The feehngs have their first and lowest centre in
the body. They start in sensations which are obscure and
local — obscure in that they reveal nothing beyond them-
selves, and local in pertaining immediately to some portion
of the body. The growth of special senses in animal life
does not alter the physical character of the feelings, though
it greatly enlarges their sweep in reference to their sources.
These obscure sensations of the earlier forms of life carry
the conditions of action beyond the states of the body.
In organic life stimuli arise from some change within the
body. The special senses gather stimuli from a broad
circle beyond the body, the ear ranging over miles and
the eye over many miles. The first mastery of space —
or ordering of action in reference to external objects —
comes from the special senses. But these alone give no
government in time. The animal, by its special senses,
cannot break beyond the charmed moment it may chance
to occupy. The organic action and the instinctive action
of the animal have reference to time, but only by virtue
of the presence of that obscure constructive principle we
term life, and not by any recognition in consciousness of
elements that involve time. When sensations are united
to memory in consciousness, then arise actions with

THE LAW OF TRUTH. 55

direct reference to time. A consciousness whose terms
are made up of sensations held fast in memory begins to
supply incentives from the past for the government of the
present. From this centre of sensation, an animal experi-
ence, involving time relations, may slowly creep onward,
may be coherent within itself, and may give quick and safe
conditions to action. As the senses are a virtual expan-
sion in space of the terms of life, so the coherence of these
sensations in memory gives a kindred extension in time.

Many are ready to believe that this statement is not
merely a first statement, looking toward human life, but
one that covers in outline its entire experience ; and this,
notwithstanding the great variety of feelings which belong
to the fully developed man, the vast range of his intellect-
ual and emotional activity, both in space and in time, and
the fluctuating and indeterminate character of his spiritual
incentives, looked upon as sources of coherent action.
The experience of the brute perfects itself as far as it
goes. It gives immediate and relatively safe impulses.
The experience of man hes scattered over an immense
field, and shows, in reference to it, neither prompt nor safe
action ; it has but a feeble organizing power. No fair
philosophy of life will fail to recognize the sudden and
great expansion in man of the data of action both in space
and in time, and the accompanying uncertainty and way-
wardness of movement that characterize him. What is
the explanation ?

We believe that the explanation is found in the fact
that man, by individual and collective experience, is taking
up a new and higher centre of life. The primary fact in
this new life is disclosed in the law of truth. The senses
give us facts ; they do not give us truths. It may indeed
be said that these facts involve truths, but they involve

56 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

them only for the reason ; they are not contemplated, in a
simply sensational experience, as containing truths. All
that such an experience requires is that they should be
felt as facts on their sensational side. As facts, they do
their work directly and rapidly. Nor does a simply con-
scious and continuous experience, lying about this centre
of sensation, alter the relation. The records of sensations
in experience are simply another train of facts, the pro-
duct of a previous train ; and this second train, by virtue
o-f memory, acts on the sensibilities precisely as the first
train acted on them.

Truth, on the other hand, has to do with facts, not as
facts, but as the language to the mind of invisible relations
and principles. The truth-craving temper is no more
^ satisfied with sensations than the linguist is satisfied with
the characters of a language he cannot read. The great
need of a sensational experience is that it shall respond
quickly and accurately to the facts so near It in space and
time as to concern its well-being. This response is secured
by organic life, by instinctive life, by sensations, memory,
and the accumulated connections of experience ; and all the
more exactly because of the narrow range of the activity.
Truth is no product of an experience of this order, nor is
it needed in perfecting it. On the other hand, it is sure
to embarrass it, as double vision may embarrass the eye.
A printer sets his type more rapidly and correctly if he
; gives no attention to the meaning of that which he com-
poses. Animal life owes its felicity of action to the nar-
rowness of the terms it contemplates, and the directness
of the incentives It feels.

The power to discern the truth as truth, on the other
hand, gives the mind at once new conditions, new impulses ;
starts it from a new centre ; and carries it immensely be-

THE LAW OF TRUTH. 57

yond the range and the wants of sensational life. Simply
seeing the stars does not much expand the world ; but
understanding them in their nature, position, and relations,
this gives the mind such a shock of heat and light as turns
a solid into a gas. This notion of truth immediately con-
fers a new centre of action, a new arrangement of experi-
ence around that centre, and calls for an immense
accumulation of the results of this experience. Not only
does truth, by its extent and coherence, lead the mind to
transcend immeasurably the limits of sensation, but what
it so gathers it reunites to sensation only in a limited
degree. The truth satisfies the mind as itself a primary
reward of pursuit, and the conformity of the thoughts to
it, their commensuration with it, become a delight. A
new set of feelings, sustaining this new movement, spring
up from it, and thus the mind becomes rooted in an in-
tellectual soil and grows there. To be sure, it has not
lost its former physical connections, but it has thrown
them into new relations around a higher centre. It feels
no compulsion, sooner or later, to bring back its gains to
animal life, but weighs its animal life by its ministration
to this new wealth.

On the other hand, the power to understand the truth,
the power of reason to take to itself the range of the
Universe along the invisible lines of thought, includes the
power of reason to direct its own inquiries, and to govern
its action in a new way — to wit, by the truth. Thus an
intellectual product intellectually apprehended comes to
be the law of an intellectual life, more and more coherent
within itself, and knitting itself together with the accu-
mulated insight and varied emotional experience of the
human race. Human life is no longer merely conscious,
combining facts as it finds them in a narrow experience ;

58 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

it is spontaneously active toward the truth, and the truth
guides it in a career of spiritual construction. This is
what we mean by spiritual life — a life that is constructed
about the centre of truth, under the law which truth
brings to rational action, and sustained by the affections
which the truth calls out between man and man, man and
God. This involves the constant exercise of will, and
will finds its ofBce in bending action to the pursuit of
truth and obedience to the truth. This conformity is
virtue, and the failure to conform is vice.

Instead, therefore, of the return of the rational mind to
its starting-point in sensation, it strives more and more to
transfer all its possessions to its new position. New and
enlarged offices are assigned the senses, and the facts of
the senses accrue not merely to the benefit of the animal
hfe, but still more to that of the spiritual life.

But the intellect can never be far or long in advance of
the feelings, and the development of the new life lies
chiefly in enlarging and deepening the affections, in
making them the conditions of new insight, and in put-
ting them in association with the lower feelings without
the loss of their own character. The law of truth, though
first a law of thought, is equally a law of feeling, and it
becomes both to our thoughts and feelings an harmonious
law only by a steady unfolding along the lines of volun-
tary action.

From this view of the philosophy of our spiritual life,
there follows at once the recognition in it of an inex-
haustible potentiality. Truth is coherent and complete
within the Universe about us. Its principles also ap-
proach our powers and subject themselves both to our
ability to comprehend them and our power to obey them.
We can, therefore, assign no limit to the degree of service

THE LAW OF TRUTH. ;59

that may ultimately be rendered us by the world about
us. The inner potentiality of this law is still greater.
Obedience moulds the mind that obeys. When obedience
is measurably complete, both in the individual and in
society ; when it passes freely its accumulated gains from
generation to generation, there will be no restraints in
those inner transformations wrought by the law of truth.
The grand principles and powers of the spiritual world
can pour themselves freely out in human society, as the
musical conception of a Mendelssohn rolls on in a
sacred oratorio. In this direction every thing is pliant,
every thing possible. IntelHgent obedience is all that is
wanting.

But great potentialities involve great liabilities, and
spiritual life is in its development marked by failure and
delay. We can not put an immense distance between the
starting-point and the goal for one purpose and in one
relation, and not find it there in other relations also. The
greatness of the thing to be attained involves a corre-
sponding variety in the means employed and length of
time in their use. Nor can this spiritual consummation
remain one of growth under spiritual powers without being
open to the chances of vacillating and recessive movements.
While liberty is not chance, it greatly increases the range
of accidents. While a rational liberty is being achieved and
brought under its own laws, it is only partially obedient
to lower laws. The first fruit of freedom is a re-
laxation of law; the full resumption of law is its last
result. Those who deny liberty in man should none the
less see that he is the least well governed of all animals,
and that his actions are constantly escaping into lawless-
ness, so far as any higher ends are concerned. This
obvious weakness at the point at which the perfection of

6o THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

the workmanship should be greatest, finds correction and
compensation to the eye of reason only by the introduc-
tion of a new voluntary law, which, once established in
clear intellectual light, will yield greater flexibility than any
physical law, equal certainty, and nobler construction.
Perfection of adjustment, combined with certainty, belongs
to reason ; this only satisfies reason. But reason has its
own laws of development, its own conditions of introduc-
tion and action ; and an interregnum in the steps of evo-
lution between laws so diverse as those of organic life and
those of spiritual life is necessarily one of grave perplexi-
ties and manifest evils. Men dash at conclusions much at
random. They glorify reason, they admire its fruits, yet
they complain bitterly of the delays it involves, and
censure thoughtlessly its necessary conditions. The
slow growth of insight, the slight gains of experience, the
dilatory transfer of just convictions into social sentiments,
the tardy improvement of the birth-right passing by inheri-
tance, the clearer visions and the better promises that from
time to time go before the race, these things are over-
looked in their full significance, and men fret at delay as
if a spiritual kingdom were so easy a construction that it
should go forward at once to the sound of music. Let the
insight of reason be broad and profound, and its conclu-
sions consistent with themselves, and the difficulties now
so readily discoverable in the circumstances of our lives will
be greatly reduced, if they do not wholly disappear. As
long as we wish ends without means, as long as we feel
that good can be conferred upon us with little reference
to our own actions and characters, or that these characters
themselves are capable of rapid and outward change, so
long the spiritual universe can not stand in our thoughts
over against the physical universe, its counterpart, and more

THE LAW OF TRUTH. 6 1

than its counterpart, in the slow, continuous, and beauti-
ful extension of order. Nothing, indeed, reminds us more
distinctly of the necessity of the bitter discipline of life
than an eager, querulous spirit of appropriation, ready to
destroy, in reference to all high spiritual uses, the very
resources it lays hold of. The most exacting members of
the household, those most hasty to be blest, are those least
able to be blest. The dulness that obscures the difficul-
ties of progress, greatly adds to them.

Reason, calm, clear, and patient, should accept once for
all spiritual growth as a supreme good, and so accepting it,
should take with it all its necessary conditions. The eye
ought not to flinch under the light, nor the reason to turn
back on itself in its own methods. This idea of growth
being clearly held, there is very little of the evil of life
which brings to the mind any new difficulty under it.
The physical evolution of the world in its tremendous
sweep, in its slow accumulation of rational terms, is before
us, in part, for this very reason, that looking far back into
darkness we may also look far forward into light, and
bring our narrow and sluggish thoughts up to the great
theme of an earth and heavens which, in reference to
those which now are, shall be new. The fact that all other
explanations of the world finally fail us, notwithstanding
the trail of light which they may seem for a time to leave
behind them, shows that they are but the sleeping visions
of children, disturbed by the weariness and distemper of
too passionate intellectual activity, and pertain not to the
quiet convictions of the eternal years and man's waking
hours.

These immense possibilities of growth locked up in the
spiritual world, obscured though they are by so many and/
so stubborn evils, give the conditions of faith. Faith

62 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

springs from the confidence of reason in reason, from a
sense of the fitness and certainty of its own universahty.
Reason admits no limits. Being present it should cover
all facts ; they should all be reasonable. This affirmation
reason readily makes to itself. When the mind adds to
the first assertion, many things are rational, the further
assertion, many more things are rational than at first
thought seemed to be, it is ready to leap, by a vigorous
spiritual induction, to the conclusion: "All that is is
rational, and every thing that is rational is." This is faith.
This is the confidence of reason in its own supremacy.
This is the belief that a Supreme Reason rules all things.
Faith, therefore, far from containing an irrational element,
is rather the inner force of reason, pushing beyond the
narrow light of experience, and conquering for order and
life the unseen as well as the seen. It is doing in the
spiritual world exactly what science does in the physical
world, when from a score of cases it implies a law, and
from a score of laws affirms the universality of law. It is
the noble inspiration of an idea which carries the mind in-
finitely beyond its present position and the vision of
the senses into the realm of universal truth. When Ave
reflect that reason is personal in us, is itself known only
in and by conscious exercise, we see at once w4iat part
faith, a trust in Reason, plays in religion.

Out of these three conditions, immeasurable possi-
bilities of growth, immeasurable dangers of growth, an
Omnipresent Reason everywhere yielding truth and
working for truth, we have the most intense and com-
plete terms of spiritual life. This presentation involves
a philosophy ! Certainly ; so does every presentation, and
we are left to raise the question whether this interpreta-
tion covers most completely and expresses most fully the

THE LAW OF TRUTH. 63

significant facts in the world's spiritual history. That it
does this in the salient features of that growth which in
individuals we term character and in nations civilization,
seems perfectly plain. None of us can set ourselves in
motion or our neighbors in motion morally without pro-
ducing for the mind one or all of these incentives —
possibilities, dangers, aids, All the resolution of the soul
is born in the moral atmosphere of these motives. The
record of men who have been morally influential in the
world is the record of the directions, degrees, and circum-
stances under which these motives have operated ; and
the greatest have been those who have felt all three in
most even balance. Neither individual experience nor
national history can contradict this assertion. The fatal-
ism of the Mussulman has in it no conditions of moral
growth ; the Nirvana of the Buddhist only helps in bring-
ing to a halt the oldest civilizations of the world ; conquest
simply expends forces it cannot renew. If any man or
nation or race begins to take on a spiritual movement, it
is because in one form or another they have to do with
the spiritual ideas which issue from the lovers of truth.
When the Christian Church, which is inseparably inter-
woven with modern society and modern civilization, has
made any step for\vard, it has been done with a definite
reenforcement of these ideas ;, and when it has lapsed into
weakness, it has been because these ideas, the constituents
of responsibility and hope, have lost application. This is
only stating what we must all admit, that some measure
or form of liberty is the accompaniment of growth, that
repressive forces are crowded back far enough to give
room for thought and action, room in which spiritual
energies can find play.

It matters not for our present purpose that these moral

64 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

conditions and this moral temper have been limited and
betrayed in a thousand ways by those who have felt them ;
it none the less remains true, that they are the universal
conditions of spiritual progress. They are the incentives
which lie back of the law of truth, and make it rationally
significant ; great things that may be gained, great things
that may be lost, and a concurrence of rational life every-
where with its rational surroundings and in its own
rational ends.

Is this law of truth the law that expresses and governs
the life of Christ, and gives it spiritual power? We
should answer this question most decisively in the affirma-
tive, whether we consider what this life contains, or what
it excludes. The law was given by Moses, but grace and
truth came by Jesus Christ. This is the comprehensive
statement of the evangelist, and one that the narrative of
the life of Christ everywhere sustains. The one inclusive
figure which expresses the effect of his words and actions
on those about him, is that of light — light that in the
physical world is the counterpart and image of truth
in the spiritual world. So thoroughly is the fellowship
of truth the very substance of his character, that it is his
life that is the hght of the world ; and it is the reception
of this light that enables his disciples to become the sons
of God. Nor, is truth altered in its freedom by its transfer
to his disciples, as is too often the case in the instructions
of a master. The disciples were to be in turn the light
of the world, a city set on a hill that could not be hid.

This relation of Christ to his disciples receives the
most succinct statement in the words : I am the way and
the truth and the life. The truth is central ; the way
leads to it ; the life springs from it. Obedience gives
the conditions of a more profound understanding of the

THE LAW OF TRUTH. 65

very substance and spirit of Christ's instructions, and this _
new mastery of the truth in broader relations fills the soul
at once with a fresh inspiration of life. The life is
awakened by the light, and the miracle of the physical
world is repeated in the spiritual world : the fountains of
light overflow with vital impulses. There is no obedience
in the Kingdom of Christ which does not rest upon truth,
and which is not in turn productive of truth ; no life which
does not draw its nourishment from the truth, and any
and all truths are esculent in this higher consumption.

For one fully to take this attitude of simple dependence
on truth in his own experience is rare indeed in human
history. Not less rare is it to pass on the same principles
to one's disciples unrestricted. The strong mind so
easily fears the perversion of a weak one, is so anxious to
guard itself against misapprehension, and so wishes not
merely to initiate action, but to control it, to go with it as
an ever-renewed impulse, that it cannot easily commit its
own precious truths to the uses of disciples in the same
unreserved spirit in which it has held them. The law of
the master and the law of the disciple separate them-
selves ; what is conviction in the one becomes restriction
in the other ; what is entire freedom here becomes partial
bondage there.

It is an inquiry, therefore, of utmost interest, the way
and the degree in which Christ put his convictions on his^^
disciples. The freedom and trustfulness of his method in-
this respect, if rightfully contemplated, is one of the most
surprising things in his character — one of the divine things
in it. No principle is shaped into a dogma, no action into ^
a rite, no personal relation into position, no guidance into
authority, and so transferred in a permanent and portable
form. The disciples take up the words of Christ and the

66 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

works of Christ without any of those conditions of organi-
zation which begin at once to straiten and Hmit the life
they enclose. The result is that none of those special
terms on which Christian churches have been constructed
can be traced in their narrow assertions of authority to
any thing in the words of Christ. Those words are pro-
ductive rather of many forms and many methods, and are
good for them all, in the degree in which they themselves
enter into the spirit of freedom, wisdom, and love. The

/ proof-texts of the theologian can rarely be taken from the
lips of Christ, and still more rarely without some loss or
some limitation put upon the spirit of the words.

This method and this spirit of Christ are so declared as
to make us feel that the few utterances capable of a nar-
rower rendering are not to be construed narrowly. He
that believeth on the son of God i-s not condemned, but
~Tie that believeth not is condemned already, because he
has not believed in the name of the only begotten son of
God. The beHef referred to is no formal acceptance of
Christ as a Saviour. Christ was slow to ask even of his
own disciples an opinion on this point. He immediately
follows the above words with the interpretation : and this

V is the condemnation that light is come into the world, and
men loved darkness rather than light. No legal form
or future condemnation is referred to. Christ guards
himself against this construction by the words : is con-
demned already. The condemnation lies in that very
blindness of the eyes to light, of the mind to truth, of

ythe heart to love, disclosed by the two facts, the presence
of Christ and his rejection.

When baptism is associated with belief as a means of
salvation, the union is so transient and so unsustained by
the instructions of Christ, that even if we have his very

THE LAW OF TRUTH. ^J

words, we may well believe that baptism here stands not
for the ordinance, but for that which the ordinance ex-
presses: cleansing of the thoughts, affections, and actions.
A behef that issues in the fruits of belief, a purified spirit,
shall carry with it salvation. The words of Christ should,
by virtue of their prevalent power, construe themselves as
profound, not superficial ; as spiritual, and not formal.
He who apprehends Christ must do it as he worships God,
in spirit and in truth.

Christ left his disciples at his death, as every ordina-
rily wise man would feel, in a very unprepared and dis-
organized state, as regards the dangers and the duties
before them. The only protection and guidance that he
promises them is that they shall be directed by the Holy
Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. What does this mean but that
their own eyes should be opened, and their own minds
more profoundly and distinctly moved by the presence of
surrounding facts and remembered instructions, till they
themselves should see and feel what was fit to be done !
Thus their individual spiritual life germinated, burst its
restraints, and began to grow. What else could be of as
much worth as this ! What else could take the place of
this!

It is not necessary that we should settle what, if any,
supernatural element is involved in this showing of the
things of Christ to his disciples by the Spirit of Truth ; it
is enough, if the whole process resolves itself into appre-
hension, comprehension, conviction, and so expends itself
freely in the realm of truth. It is enough, if it is the
office of the Spirit of Truth to guide the disciples
of Christ into all truth. What spiritual boldness of
treatment have we here, to cast out those timid, ignorant,
callow disciples — certainly timid, ignorant, and callow, if

68 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

we contrast their powers with the apparent powers called
for by the work they had to do — on the tempestuous
times that followed the crucifixion ! Yet it was a method
in exact keeping with the moral discipline of the world
to-day, that flings truth as seed broadcast, letting it fall
where it may, and suffer what fortunes it may, the one
possibility always present, that it shall somewhere spring
up and grow according to its own nature and in its own
power.

Christ puts but one limitation on this use of truth. We
are not to cast pearls before swine. This is a limit which
lies not so much within the natural bounds of truth as
without them. It is the swinish, not simply the
antagonistic, temper that is rejected, and the swinish tem-
per does not apprehend truth as truth. The herd are
enraged that pearls are not provender, and so turn in
their fury on the giver. It is against the law of prudence
to offer truth that cannot bear instruction and may carry
irritation. So Christ at his trial remained for the most
part silent amid the blind passions that swayed the multi-
tude about him. This injunction is simply saying that
truth is to be used as truth, and not to be thrown away
heedlessly as if it were not truth. It involves a loving
and reverential, reservation of truth for its own high ends
and ofifices. This is the Christ-like method, but as pru-
dence, quickened by fear, only too easily persuades men
to withhold the truth that at all endangers them, the
principle is let pass with a bare mention. Against this
timidity, which unduly extends the principle, the whole
life of Christ is a protestation. That life had the one
supreme and supremely noticeable fact in it, that he bore
the truth everywhere to all classes, undisturbed by the
conflict awakened by it.

THE LAW OF TRUTH. 69

At no point has it been more difficult for the Church to
apprehend the life of Christ than in its simple, unreserved
obedience to the truth. Men distrust each other. They
distrust the wisdom, they distrust the convictions and the
good-will, of those about them. They wish, therefore, to
set up safeguards against the ignorance and prejudices
and waywardness of those who may come after them ;
they desire to make sure of what they themselves have
gained. The father cannot easily believe that the son
may be safely trusted with the same freedom that he
himself has enjoyed. Men are thus led to thrust their
conclusions on those about them ; to overlap the lives
of others with their own lives. The quickening liberty
of Luther becomes the crippling bondage of his dis-
ciples. This conviction and this action are not all awry.
Men are often much what we think them to be. Our
error lies in our notion of the remedy. This remedy
must ultimately be more truth, and more freedom,
therefore, in its use. Freedom cures freedom. Restraint,
that is first a rule and then a barrier, must ere long be
broken down. We wish to correct a moral evil by a
physical, or semi-physical, force. The good we thus do is
partial and transient ; the evil we fall into is great and
permanent. The one thing needful, that good part
which shall not be taken from us, is to sit at the feet of
Christ ; and till this is attained, the work is not truly
begun, the law of truth has not found application. What
more perfect or more painful contrast than that between
Christ and the fathers of the Inquisition ? Yet the In-
quisition was the logical outcome of accepting truth, yet
not accepting it under the law of truth — free, rational con-
viction. If truth could be transferred otherwise than
spiritually, the methods of the inquisitor are p(5ssibly

70 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

correct, and are to be looked on with interest, like the sur-
gery of the surgeon. With no breaking in on civil law,
with a conservative regard for social institutions, Christ
recognized completely the office of truth and the freedom
of truth — the truth shall make you free. Men for twenty
centuries have been slowly, painfully, almost blindly tra-
cing these footsteps of Christ and advancing a little dis-
tance in them. Is it not true, exactly true, grandly true,
Christ is the way ?

Men are perpetually turning truth into authority.
Christ turned authority into truth. He taught them as
one having authority, yet only this authority of the visible
reasonableness of the thing said. His words hit on and
held fast by the eternal laws of mind : the laws of spiritual
life. Men may rebel against this method and spirit of
Christ, they may wander very far from them, but they must
return to them again before they can advance. We need
trouble ourselves but little about the exact phase of critical
and historical proof of Revelation. The spirit of that
Revelation has gotten clear expression, and twenty cen-
turies have shown it to be the divine law of our own
constitution and of the constitution of society ; the one
inherent law of the Spiritual Universe. This law was em-
bodied in the hfe of Christ, and so he became the one
Divine Messenger.

What, then, is the great fact before us in the world but
this : a protracted effort of the incipient spiritual nature
of man to shake itself loose from physical and social ob-
structions, to master its own conditions, to assert itself
in the purity and priority of its own law of truth, and
to do this, as it can only be done, in the force and freedom
of thought. Men start in violence ; they expect to impel
and to restrain with the ever-ready blow. The word of

THE LAW OF TRUTH. 7 1

reason and of persuasion is unuttered or merely uttered.
Later, when they begin to speak words of counsel and of
caution, they still think that a true self-assertion requires
that the blow of enforcement shall follow fast on the pro-
test : " a word and a blow." Government is grounded in
these brute instincts. It is long before truth can be left,
and still longer before it is left, to work its own rational
way among the thoughts of men, and assert the authority
which belongs to it. But Christ is from the beginning
the word, the word of reason, the word of revelation, the
word of persuasion. He theoretically asserts the law of
truth ; ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make
you free : he practically applies and uses it. He set it in
motion among men, so that ever-returning assertions of it,
from his time onward, have brought it down to us. On
the other hand, delay, obscurity, obstruction, arise from
the various ways in which this law is narrowed and re-
tarded. As a spiritual law it must assert itself spiritually,
and so the moral strife lasts, as in itself the best thing that
remains to us, till the moral life prevails. If we so read
the world, we read Christ at every sentence into it ; if we
do not so read it, it sinks back into darkness, till its lessons
die out for us, one by one, in the on-coming night of
death. The light breaks out for a moment, we know not
why ; dazzles us, and is lost again, before we can begin to
see by means of it. But if we grant truth, the law of
truth, the Revelation of truth, the victory of truth, this
light never palls on our astonished vision, but leads us
from knowledge to knowledge, from glory to glory, even
as by the Spirit of God. The only transforming power in
the world is faith, receptivity, exercised toward the power
that transforms, — the Divine Truth, the fulness of the
Revelation of righteousness and peace, Christ our Lord,

CHAPTER V.

The Law of Love.

While the physical universe has reached a point of con-
struction comparatively complete, and presents laws that
cover its facts with fulness and with a fitness that is at least
sufficient to carry it steadily onward, the spiritual universe
is relatively chaotic ; its laws are but partially defined, and
are constantly disobeyed. We may, indeed, say of the
laws of spiritual life that they are inherently perfect, but
that perfection is not discerned by those subject to them,
nor pursued when discerned. We must still look upon
these higher laws as ideal states struggling with the un-
pliant and disobedient materials from which they are to
be constructed. So true is this that many catch sight of
no certain lines^of order, no steady energies of growth, no
sufficient spiritual goal to which all things are tending.
They are tempted to regard the spiritual universe as an
accident — and not a fortunate one — of the physical uni-
verse. Others, a little more hopeful, look upon it as the
present inchoate term in general development. They sup-
pose that when the physical forces of the world shall, by
the conditions which they impose, have reached more fully
personal and social forces, and given them closer terms of
action, a development in human life, somewhat akin to
the movement which has taken place elsewhere, and in
completion of it, is to be expected. The vista is neither
a very clear one, nor extended one, nor bright one, but it
is still a vista. A spiritual universe that is simply the last

72

THE LAW OF LOVE. 73

term in a physical universe necessarily suffers from com-
parison with that ideal state which has so long hovered
before the minds of men, and which springs from the
belief that the spiritual is in some way destined to enclose
and possess the physical, as the higher uses the lower, and
not to be a decadent bud upon it.

To those who entertain this more comprehensive and
historical hope, the two laws of love : Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind ; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself, offer the outline of order and the germinant
idea in the new kingdom toward which all things are
moving, if not hastening. This much would seem to be
plainly true, that if the facts of the spiritual world in
themselves, and in their relation to those of the physical
world, are such as to give the grounds of these two com-
mands, and their establishment as laws in the progress of
events, there is the possibility of a perfect spiritual
kingdom, as much more perfect than the physical one as it
is in its terms higher than it. Love is the supreme
pleasure-giving impulse in human life. We use the term
love as the last stepping-stone of ascent by which to ex-
press our feelings toward the things that confer enjoy-
ment upon us, from lower objects to the highest persons
who minister to our well-being. The highest directions
of love, the fullest expansion of love, the harmony of love, —
these are the conditions of a spiritual life, complete within
itself. The two laws involve this highest direction, fullest
expansion, and perfect harmony ; and, therefore, their pos-
sibility as controlling terms in the world is the possibility
of a Kingdom of Heaven. The first command expresses
the elevation and expansion of our affections ; the second,
their expansion and harmony. These two laws being

^^4 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

operative, and physical conditions being conformable to
the demands made by them, we should have a perfect
spiritual kingdom, without weakness and without conflict.
Nor is it too much to say that in the degree in which
either of these laws fails of realization, in that degree must
spiritual evolution come short of its mark. We are able
to see clearly that these are the conditions and the essen-
tial ones of spiritual construction.

The first law implies a supreme centre, the second law
the harmony of all in tKeir relations to it and to each
other. Neither in kind nor degree is any thing to be
added to this kingdom of God. It is a great kingdom,
the very greatest ; it is a free kingdom, the very freest ;
a harmonious kingdom, even absolutely so.

The unrest of our time, and of previous times, is plainly
due to the weakness of spiritually organic forces. Our
impulses are misdirected and unsatisfactory in their at-
tainments ; they are accompanied at every step with fatal
collisions and great losses. Unrest is the result of ill-
directed and insufficient affections, and of the want of
harmony in the social world where such affections find
play. The physical jar that is still present in the world is
a real factor and a great factor of evil, but is for the most
part incident to and consequent upon the perpetual and
pervasive jar of the spiritual world. This is the inherent
relation of the two ; the first intensifies the second, and
the second cannot be overcome without at the same time
overcoming the first with slow eHmination. The manifold
appetites and passions of men, and the manifold discipline
to which they are subjected, are parts of one system.
Unrest in human society is simply the fever of the
patient, partly medicative partly punitive, partly pro-
ductive of evil and partly remedial of it. The moment

THE LAW OF LOVE. 75

these two laws are present in the mind, it has caught
sight of the goal, to whose attainment all effort and all
hope may be rationally directed. An idea, complete to
the eye of reason, is offered to our thoughts, and invites
our pursuit.

The command of supreme love toward God can not
fittingly be laid upon men, except in connection with
such a disclosure of his character and of his relations to
us as is fitted to call out and sustain this love. The
injunction, when made, gains its full scope only as the
revelation which accompanies it becomes complete. Su-
preme and permanently restful affections can only spring
up in the clear light of reason. The greatness of this first
command is seen in the greatness of that which it implies.
It is a feeble and ineffectual thing to command love,
unless its conditions are at the same time supplied. The
force which is to evoke this great love of man toward
God is not the word of authority, but that absolute
rationality, that supreme excellence, that patience of
power, that overflowing love of God, which remove all
distrust, all fear, all misapprehension, and render the
mind able to draw near to God, and to abide, without one
disturbing thought, in his wisdom and grace. We do not
owe our greatest debt to Christ for rescuing these two
commands from the rubbish about them and assigning
them their true position, but for making that fresh reve-
lation of God, and of his relations to us, which justifies and
sustains the precepts. The fatherhood of God, in its
fullest scope, is the idea which answers to the perfect
moral law, and gives that law the possibility of fulfilment.
The spiritual force of the law arises from the increasing light
of the revelation. The law, though formally stated, was
not truly announced, till it fell from the lips of Christ. A

76 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

Star had shone out for an instant here and there, and been
lost again, but now the heavens began to clear and their
true glory to be seen. In the Jewish code the injunction,
Thou shalt love thy neighbor, was a companion precept
with the command, and hate thy enemy ; while the
supreme love of God, as the national protector, stood con-
trasted in the thoughts of the Israelite with adoration
wandering out toward other gods. It was national integ-
rity rather than spiritual integrity that was uppermost in
the injunction.

If Christ had made no additional disclosure of the
temper of God, if he had not revealed a love potent to
draw forth our love, these commands would have failed
both of instruction and of renovating power. Indeed
they have perpetually failed, because of the mean con
ditions which men have brought to them. The lawyer,
full of the law as he thought himself, rose up in the face
of the command. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy
self, with the question, Who is my neighbor ? evidently
hoping by some subtile distinction to Avin back the field of
daily Hfe to its ordinary impulses. The parable of the
good Samaritan, with which Christ made answer, is of
greater moral worth than the command, because it gives
the command an extension and inter[3retation not to be
evaded. The first command, so far as it has the vigor of
a moral law, is the offspring of that vision of our Heavenly
Father which discloses him as the centre and source of
spiritual life, and draws the heart without reserve unto
him. Such a vision rose only for a moment in any human
mind prior to Christ, and has been present only in a
partial, interrupted way since his time. The law, there-
fore, has struggled for authority, and shown but a small
part of the organic force which is in it. Yet, as the

THE LAW OF LOVE. ']']

revelation of God gains breadth and depth, it carries the
law with it, and constructs men's thoughts under it. But
this movement is very, very far from completion. The
law can neither be perfectly understood nor fully obeyed
till the Supreme Moral Life out of which it springs is
clearly present to men's minds. The eye may see much
of the light before it can brook the full blaze of noonday,
and drink in directly the sun's rays. The possibility of
obedience to the first command, and of the full inflow of
moral life which accompanies obedience, is the possibility
of seeing God as he is, in the purity, scope, and intensity
of his rational love.

The possibility of that obedience to the second com-
mand which shall make the flow of our affections toward
our fellow-men pure and restful, is double. It involves
first a recognition of the fact that they are by constitution
the members of one household under one law, harmonious
in its action ; and secondly, our hearty acceptance of this
fact, with corresponding desire to secure its complete
realization. The second command follows from the first
command. Not till we find God as a father can we love
him, and not till, standing with our fellow-men, we find
him as Our Father who art in Heaven, can we feel the
full flow of the reflex love we owe to them. If there is
not theoretical unity in the spiritual kingdom ; if men do
not by constitution belong to one kingdom, then it is vain
to strive to construct a kingdom out of discordant ma-
terials by mere authority. No matter how often and in
how many places obedience may spring up, it must die
out again, if the soil and the climate of the spiritual world
are not congenial to it. We first catch sight of this unity
of men in their common relation to God. Christ bears it
constantly with him in his instruction. He addresses

'J% THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

himself to sinners, to the weary and heavy-laden ; that is,
to those who seem to stand farthest out in the spiritual
kingdom, and least to belong to it. He seeks after the
lost sheep that he may restore it to the one fold under the
one shepherd. This fact once felt, that the love of God
is as broad as the rational kingdom, the forces of con-
struction operating freely in every portion of that king-
dom, we have at once the conditions of hopeful and loving
labor with men and for men. As a matter of fact, it has
been by the discernment of this relation almost exclu-
sively that men have reached the second plane of love.
They have come down to it from the first plane. They
have traveled with the light ; they have felt the benign
purpose of God, and have shared it.

Frederic Harrison, in a plaintive and pathetic way, ex-
postulates with men, and strives to push them on toward
a " human synthesis," and to marshal them as an army in
confronting the ills about them. It is a very unusual
effort and a despairing effort to save the beauty and prom-
ise of the second command by one who has lost hold
of the first command: *' Strange that we do not all, day
and night, incessantly seek for an answer to this of all
questions the most vital. Is there any thing by which man
can order his life as a whole ? Is there any thing by which
our nature can gain its unity ; our race acknowledge its
brotherhood ? " ^' What is there left, I say ; what other
idea can become the basis of mundane faith but the idea of
humanity which includes all ? " ^' No one of these critics
has ventured to dispute the great central principle of a
human synthesis for thought and life, the principle that
in convergence toward our common humanity we may at
last find a complete repose for our efforts — peace within
us, peace among men." ^ What a bursting up and pour-

^ Nmteenth Century, March, i88l.

THE LAW OF LOVE. 79

ing forth of man's moral nature have we here when there
is so little to unseal its fountains ! How far is a human
synthesis possible aside from faith in God !

If the law of love is an inchoate principle in the human
constitution, — as w^e beheve it to be — it may be found
there and urged on the attention of men ; but if it is not
there, human synthesis is a philanthropic illusion which
can help no one. But if a supreme spiritual synthesis is
provided for in the constitution of man and society, what
better or more profound proof can be given for the being
of God? What can hide or dim this proof to the mind
that sees the fact, that the germs of peace are all planted
in the spiritual world ? Nothing can hide it, nothing dim
it, save some blind incoherent conviction that the same
Divine Power that implants the moral principle could push
it forward more rapidly in development, or dispense per-
chance with development altogether, and make peace and
good-will on earth, not proclaim them. That is to say,
men first recognize the excellency of spiritual powers and
spiritual Hfe, and then become impatient of their necessary
conditions. They invoke physical forces that may in some
inexplicable way flood our spiritual powers, lift them up,
and bear them at once to the goal. Men crave spiritual
elevation, but they would fain reach it by unspiritual
means. The mind will not hold fast to reason as reason,
virtue as virtue. Moving forward in their own way, by
their own means, to their own ends, they would wish God
to make what can not be made.

Yet Frederic Harrison is so far hopeful beyond his
faith, that, while denying the intelligibility and credibility
of any supreme law or grace in the world, he desires none
the less to gather up the shreds of moral order in society,
to interest men in them, and to weave them together into

So THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

that most magnificent of all conceivable products, a
human synthesis. If this is possible, the easier thing
should also be possible, the recognition of one rational
purpose as pervasive of the lives of men, everywhere de-
fining their aims, in every way helping them on to their
fulfilment. History is an obscure riddle if this is not the
order of progress in human thought; a divine impulse
working with human virtue ; human virtue striving to ful-
fil the purposes of a divine impulse. In spite of the many,
the manifest, the bitter failures in religion, it has been by
religious hope, zeal, insight, that men have gone forward.
The apparent exceptions to this rule are really no excep-
tions. Frederic Harrison is himself the product of the
very faith that he has lost. The wine of the gospel has
indeed come to us in unclean and earthen vessels, but we
can not be altogether mistaken in its true character.
Whether a human synthesis can be hoped for in oversight
of the first command, is the inquiry ; Whether, with a frac-
tion of the motives hitherto present, we can do the work of
the world, when these motives in their entirety have borne
events forward but slowly ?

The second portion of the law of love remains incipient
for another reason. It is of the nature of the construc-
tions of reason that they are ideal, and must be pursued
as ideals ; their implications and involutions are indefi-
nitely great, and are never exhausted. The law of love
is operative in society between man and man. Its perfect
action, therefore, implies a perfect state of society, a
society whose units respond one and all to this law. So
thoroughly is the individual life a part of the general life,
that there can be no perfection in the one without cor-
responding perfection in the other. The law of love
can not move under perpetual contradictions and retarda^

THE LAW OF LOVE. 8 1

tions without a loss of ease and fitness, and a reduction
in its power to bless the hearts that are struggling to
receive it. Love does not allow us to overlook the facts
of life, — a love that does this is blind passion — and de-
basement, meanness, malignity, not only remain in them-
selves what they are, but they take on a peculiarly hateful
aspect, and bring ugly limitations when confronted with
virtue. Love so placed must feel abhorrence and re-
pugnance. The affections, therefore, which are taking
root in minds partially cognizant of the higher law of
their lives, must, when brought in conflict with the im-
pure and selfish impulses about them, issue in repulsions
as well as attractions, divisions as well as unions.

Farther than this, there is always in the spirit that has
not yet attained its moral manhood, with whom virtue
remains a struggle, many partially suppressed passions,
which are awakened in an evil way by the evil they
encounter. Evil has a diabolical power in discovering
and eovking evil. To endure the contradictions of sinners
is a divine attribute only. This reaction of evil under
evil in the partially virtuous mind unites with the just
repugnance of pure love, and mars the moral state. The
inner balance of virtue is lost, and the painful strife in
one's own thoughts is renewed, called out afresh, by the
turbulence of the moral world. The vessel is tossed by
the sea on which it rides. This is ever the most unfortu-
nate result of evil : that it so penetrates the mind which
is setting up defences against it. If no absolute defection
follows this return of passion to our inner lives, it none
the less obscures our vision and distresses us in our work.

But the law of love is also, in an important sense, sus-
pended by the presence of vice. The vicious person
can not be treated as the virtuous one. The gentle minis-

S2 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

trations and pervasive good-will which belong to love are
no longer applicable. They must be modified in some
very real, but oftentimes very difficult and obscure, way.
A feeling of censure and indignation must be present.
Virtue must show itself belligerent. It may, indeed, be
said that the reserved energy which belongs to justice in
its w^ork of restraint and correction is in harmony with
love, but it is a harmony peculiarly difficult to realize and
express. The expressions of justice and of indignation
are not those of love : they are directed toward disobedi-
ence, not obedience ; sin, not righteousness ; and it calls
for the highest equipoise of spiritual life to reach without
ever passing their limits. Pure love is drawn out only
in the direction of virtue. In -human society, therefore,
we constantly find ourselves in positions in which love is
not the fitting moral expression. The appropriate moral
state is thereby made peculiarly difficult, and the needed
opportunities of the more peaceful affections are lost.
Thus the life of virtue in the soul is cut down to the con-
ditions of the life without it. We must respond to that
which demands response, be it sin or righteousness ; but
the law of love in its complete form lies between the
righteous only.

A further fact looks in the same direction. Not only are
there these positive repellents to pure love, there is cor-
responding weakness in its positive impellents. Love can
not be called out if there be nothing toward which it can
be directed. We can not love, we ought not to love, the
impure and the selfish as we love the pure and unselfish,
and any measure of these qualities is in abatement of the
higher affection. Love in indiscriminate exercise loses its
own character, and imparts no superiority of character to
its objects. Our love toward God is supreme simply

THE LAW OF LOVE. 83

because his virtue is perfect, and we can love our fellow-
men only as they share, or begin to share, his excellence.
The purity of the spirit is the only perfect bond of peace.
We can not, we must not, lose this purity. Any dispro-
portion between the love and the object of the love
loosens every rational relation. We are not called on to
love our neighbor otherwise than we love ourselves, and
we ouc^ht not to love ourselves otherwise than as we are
pure. Any measure of impurity abates the force of love.
Moreover, sin always implies and carries with it visual
obscurity and obliquity. It shortens and perverts the
sight. It is unable to discern moral facts fully, or trace
moral results correctly. It is ready on the one side with
the extenuation of faults, on the other with their exagger-
ation. As long as sin is in the social system, the facts of
that system will not be understood. The results neither
of obedience nor disobedience will be pure results. Every
thing will be mixed, perplexed, obscure. No one who is
immersed in this defective social sentiment can be free
from its perverting moral power. He will be too in-
dulgent and too severe. He can no more escape these '
conditions of his time than the ship can escape the cur-
rents that run under its keel. The limitations of our
intellectual powers and of our moral powers go together,
and must be escaped together. As the individual can not
perfect his physical, intellectual, or social constitution
aside from society, no more can he his moral constitution,
the most inclusive of them all. Growth here comes by a
continuous and extended interplay with the spiritual
world, till, in some sense, every man is a function to every
other man, and the perfection of the parts is won by the
perfection of the whole. Our fellow-men must do much
of our thinking, and must organize the moral forces

84 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

which are to play upon our lives, and by which in turn
our lives play upon their lives. The higher life of each
man flows into the community, and flows back to him
from the community. The health of this circulation is
the composite health of the human household.

We see the action of this fact in reference to God.
The infinite love of God is hidden from us. Why ? Be-
cause the moral conditions of the world are such as not to
allow its full manifestation. The light is in the heavens,
but the sky is gray and sombre with clouds. Trans-
gression will neither admit of unrestrained disclosures of
love, nor correctly apprehend the limited ones which its
own presence occasions. The same is true among men.
We do not fully discern or freely acknowledge the virtues
of our fellows. There is the same obscuration here as in
the higher field. The vapors which hide the sun hide
men from each other. This is especially seen in the
irritation which accompanies argument. Few are able to
allow a better opinion to set aside an inferior one without
discomfort. The contact of mind with mind, even at the
point of truth, calls out the heat of collision. Supremely
fortunate as is this action of mind on mind, it has fre-
quently been one of disastrous passion. Men can not do
even the good thing well.

It follows, then, from these reasons : first, that sin is re-
pellent ; second, that virtuous men still suffer its reactions ;
third, that it calls for a peculiar and peculiarly difficult
moral recognition ; fourth, that it weakens the incentives
to love ; and, fifth, that it begets a hazy moral atmos-
phere ; — from these reasons it follows that the law of love
is a rational ideal, progressively applicable under its own
application. It indicates the constructive lines in the
spiritual world, and gains force as these gain extension.

THE LAW OF LOVE. 8$

This law is not put upon the spirit as something to be in-
stantly realized ; it is born of reason and must be sustained
by the fullest reason. If we think of it as a precept simply,
we shall soon belittle it, reducing it to our present meas-
ure. Such a method involves an oversight of the ideal
fulness of the law, and of the endless spiritual unfolding
which must take place under it.

At first thought it may seem surprising that the law of
love in its two branches, present to the minds of men
for nineteen Christian centuries, should have met with
so little comprehension and obedience. Indeed, the
perfection of the law seems to have been hopelessly ob-
scured by the imperfection of the practice under it. It is
almost useless to ask what religious organization under-
stands this law, and strives after obedience, so manifest is
it that a narrow and antagonistic spirit has prevailed
among all considerable bodies of men. As civil construc-
tions, industrial economics, and social customs are still
grounded in Christian nations in self-interest, so do they
also express the average action of Christian men. This
narrowine down of a fundamental ideal truth in the minds
of men, that it may lie side by side with the meagre re-
sults that chance to be present in practice, is, from one
point of view, the height of moral misfortune. If we
would put to ourselves the moral facts of the world cor-
rectly, in their grounds of encouragement and discourage-
ment, we must understand their relation to this primary
law under which alone harmony and perfection are at-
tainable.

Men constantly wish to secure, and hope to secure, by
rhapsody what can be secured only by reason, in its slow,
plodding processes. It is at this point that men theoreti-
cally and practically oftenest fall out with the divine

86 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

government. They look to it for aid when they should
look to themselves, charge upon it the fruits of their own
actions, and wish to substitute the grace of God for the
grace of men. This means simply that the fundamental
methods of reason have not yet taken possession of their
thoughts, that they have not yet climbed out of a world of
incoherent indulgencies into one of coherent delights ; out
of one of gifts into one of powers ; that they have not yet
learned to live under reason, by reason, for reason. The
test question in the divine government is: What would
be the results if this were done? Would the proposed
method in application justify itself to reason }

Spiritual growth is this extension and coherence of our
rational powers, and the law of love is a formula of
movement ; as much so as a mathematical formula is the
summation of the numerous and complicated steps which
it gathers up. The formula has no value save in re-
lation to the processes it summarizes, and the law has no
worth save in connection with the spiritual life it formu-
lates. It is not the law we want, but the life to which the
law pertains.

Love, perfected spiritual love, as a product of growth is
rooted far back, historically, in self-love. If love is to be
no foolish and flickering sentiment, but a thoroughly com-
prehensive and intensely rational feeling, its first term
must be a keen perception and high valuation of all the
great pleasures that attach to human life, and these pleas-
ures can be best learned, where they are most truly experi-
enced, in ourselves. No one would wish an ascetic to pre-
scribe his diet, nor a hermit his clothing, nor a dullard his
reading. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself would
not cure the verdict they would render. The surrepti-
tious saint not understanding himself cannot understand

THE LAW OF LOVE. 8/

another, not guiding himself wisely, he cannot wisely
guide another. The breadth, intensity, dehcacy, balance
of our own experience are the charts which prepare us to
direct the experience of others, and so to make the law of
love as efficacious in their lives as has been self-love in our
own lives. A man without self-love cannot have love, he
has no measure for it. The experience of the world in
the various claims of men's appetites, passions, tastes, af-
fections is not more various or more difBcult of reconcilia-
tion than is needful in order rightly and fully to interpret
human nature to itself, to give it a complete inventory of
the conditions and resources of human happiness, and to
furnish forth the reason of man with the terms of its own
activity. One who has no intensity of life at the centre
of life, — self — can have no intensity at its circumference. I£
love is a law to such a man, there is little or nothing for
the law to rule. It is not the law alone, but that which
the law orders that makes strength and beaut}^ The
first term in the growth of a rational kingdom of love is
self-love, bursting out in the fulness of its impulses into a
thousand forms of selfishness, all waiting for the love that
is to restrain them, guide them, and transform them.
This love must enter at the various points of transition,
and by the various measures of reconstruction, which
teach and help the masses, and shape them as furnishing
the only and true body of social life. The development
of society is by a series of steps, in themselves secondary
and transitional. Ground must be gained in one direction
and built upon, before it can be gained in another direc-
tion. Each application of the law of love between man
and man, class and class, the people and the state, implies
a present preparation for a new relation, and no sooner is
the new method fully established than it prepares the way

88 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

for a higher one. Every step toward an equality of rights
and opportunities successfully taken gives the conditions
for the further extension of the same principles. This is
true, however, only as the movement is general, pervading
society and carrying it onward as a whole. The law of
love is strictly a social one, and it must be allowed to
shape to its own ends all the material subject to it. Re-
tardation and retreat at one point, carry with them
retardation and retreat at all points. It is impossible for
the individual, because of this very law of love, to separate
his own development from that of the community. Class-
cultivation and class-power only widen the breach be-
tween classes, set fast limits to love, and put off the re-
demption of society. Such a division, if held to, becomes
an occasion of disruption. The law of love finds its im-
mediate field in society, is constructive of society both in
its civil and social relations, and expands in its action as
society expands. The presence of such a law proclaims
at once the long line of progress open to the race. He
who checks social development at any point, in the rela-
tion of classes, in the organization of the state, in the
duties of the state, puts himself in conflict w^ith this law —
a law that cannot lie between heart and heart in one rela-
tion without lying between them in all relations. We can
not have a state founded in mere justice, and a society
under it shaped by love*

To discern, therefore, the points at which and the
degrees in which the higher law is immediately applicable,
to introduce it at these points, and press it in these direc-
tions, become the form of duty under which the indi-
vidual and the community, in joint development, apply
the law. This method of progress takes up the problem
factor by factor, calls for only a partial apprehension of

THE LAW OF LOVE. 89

the ultimate result, incorporates good-will piecemeal into
the civil construction and social spirit, supplements and
supplants with it the lower ideas of justice and protection,
and increasingly wins those conditions under which the
law is fully applicable and the beauty of its results fully
appreciable. At any one stage of this movement, it is too
much to expect, save in connection with a few rarely
gifted in spiritual powers, that the law of love shall stand
for any thing more than a kindly administration of per-
sonal possessions, and of the customs which for the time
being define society. The opinions of the masses of men
wait to be modified by those very forces which are to
reshape society. The law, therefore, grows into the
thoughts of men as it grows into society, slowly, by
insensible degrees, and as one indivisible process. Even
the most advanced ideas of the clearest minds and best
hearts must remain incomplete, as not able fully to com-
prehend the complex changes involved in the conditions
of the growing problem ; and also as found only partially
applicable in the community, still tardy in offering the
safe conditions of progress.

It is of the utmost moment that we see how completely
a social law this law of love is, and the limitations of
apprehension and application which accompany it in every
stage of development, as it slowl}^ penetrates the masses
of men, remoulds individual character, and reshapes social
ties. As no class can separate its fortunes from the
fortunes of the community, neither can any man long
maintain in a felicitous form any spiritual feelings which
are not shared by those about him. Truth calls for dis-
persion and reflection for the ends of vision, as much as
does light. The law to have the full range of the
thoughts and feelings must have full range of the facts

90

THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

through the whole extent of the spiritual realm. When
the facts disclaim it, the thoughts will begin to lose it.
As a law of organization, also, it demands and implies a
reciprocal relation of every part under it.

That delays, mistakes, deficiencies, will accompany the
development of this law among men is a matter of course ;
the correction of them is what God and good men are
about. No accusation has less reason back of it than that
which charges upon the advocates of a beneficent idea
the inconsistencies and perversions that arise under it.
It is given to no man to see the breadth of a great moral
principle, much less to see the times, places, limits, of its
fortunate introduction. Every progressive movement is
slow, tentative, partial, and they are to be praised who join
in it on these terms of obscurity and confusion. Great
mistakes are of comparatively little account in ultimate
results. They bring delay and occasion reactions, but
they suggest their own corrections, and have their own
instruction. At all events they are unavoidable, and the
faith of the faithful spirit is strengthened in overcoming
them. The keenest and quickest censure should fall on
those who make mistakes and failures the grounds of
unbelief and inaction. They constitute the dead material
which will not let the living power have its way. Some
sharp pains may attend on the action of vital forces, but
when the forces themselves become languid, the danger is
tenfold greater.

All forms of presentation of the law of love in Christian
churches have been partial or partially apprehended, yet
the law has found development in connection with them,
or, perchance, at times in spite of them. The law is not
altered, nor the rational ideal which it involves lost, by
this struggle which attends on its fulfilment. The con-

THE LAW OF LOVE. 9I

fusion of thought and feeling whicli accompanies the intro-
duction, theoretically and practically, of moral ideas, is far
greater than that which comes with new theories and new
methods in science ; as the interests involved are more
complicated and sensitive, and the moral truth is subject
not simply to the action of clear and superior minds, but
of all minds, and that too in their most perverted and self-
ish movements.

The spiritual problem of the world is to be understood
on its own spiritual basis ; and on that basis, What do we
find ? That Christ clearly announced the law of con-
struction, the law of love, and gave it its central position
as a law on whose prevalence all harmony and all well-
being depend. If obedience under this law is not attain-
able, moral life has no goal ; if it is attainable, it has an
absolutely perfect ideal. Christ also restores to the minds
of men, or reveals to them, those conceptions of God and of
their relations to him and to each other, which constitute,
on the one side, the spiritual facts to which alone such a
law is applicable, and which furnish, on the other, the only
incentives of action sufficient for the fulfilment of the law.
The law is not offered as ideal merely, but as the rational
exposition of existing facts.

Christ does not stop with this theory of life, nor busy
himself primarily in directing attention to it. He takes up
the details of duty, which lie so near his own hand, yet
so far off from the ideal, and thus initiates life under the
law. He understands how incomprehensible the law itself
is to the crude thoughts of men without better facts under
it, and these facts he gives, and so helps the giving
forever forward. There thus springs up a spiritual move-
ment which, with all its delays and failures, has yet
at every stage brought this law more clearly into the

92 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

foreground. What other way now remains to us, but this
same way ? What other name is given under heaven in
which this work of salvation can be completed ? Evidently,
whether we acknowledge Christ or not, we must follow in
his steps, if we seek our own perfection and the perfection
of men. The needed ideas have been furnished, the
needed methods initiated, and all that remains to be done
is to go forward.

Take the command: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy
mind, and the parable of the prodigal son, as expounding
the terms of our relations to God ; take the command :
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, and the parable
of the good Samaritan as its working formula; add to
these the life of Christ as the one immaculate fact in the
world's history under these laws, and we can hardly fail to
see how the spiritual problem of the world now stands,
how far it has been wrought out, and how it remains to be
finished.

CHAPTER VI.

The Law of Consecration.

The older discussions in morals, as well as the more
recent ones, turn on the relation of pleasure to duty.
The most vigorous and painstaking thought has not yet
been able to unite the opinions of earnest and reflective
men on the question, whether the law of conduct is to be
drawn from our sensibilities, or is to be referred in its
ultimate authority to a rational fitness of its own, ration-
ally discerned ; whether this authority is extrinsic to
reason or intrinsic to it. Man, by virtue of his physical
organism, has a wide range of sensibilities. These sensi-
bilities are greatly multiplied by his intellectual and social
constitution. It has been claimed by many, from Epi-
curus onward, that herein we have the foundations of our
moral constitution. That if these pleasures are widely
and wisely compared, both over broad surfaces and
through long periods; if individual and social relations
are both considered, and also the tendencies which accom-
pany inheritance, we shall discover therein a sufficient
law of human action. That there is a law derivable from
our sensitive organization, and that it is one of great
moment, none can doubt. The lines of pleasure and
those of duty, even if we regard duty as containing a
transcendent element of authority, are inseparably inter-
woven with each other, and are in constant reaction. It
is this fact, and the further fact that the two laws apply to
the same field in human life, that have made the discus-

93

94 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

sion SO difficult and so obscure. A very important por-
tion of the facts has been held by each of the two
contestants, and has in each case been held without a
sufficient recognition of the correlative facts brought
forward in the opposed presentation. The grounds de-
fended have not been false but partial.

The strict evolutionary idea is of course committed to
the development of the moral constitution of man from
his sensitive nature. It is plain that the law of that
portion of the action of the animal which is most allied to
conduct is one of pleasure, and it is thence inferred that
the moral behavior of man is simply an individual and
social expansion of the same law by greatly enlarged
powers. This view has never been more confidently
asserted than at present, and never more wisely sup-
ported ; yet there remains a large number to whom it is
utterly distasteful, and that, too, usually, of men of high
moral development.

Nor is this fundamental point in morals made depend-
ent on religious beliefs. The discussion does, indeed,
easily and naturally draw to either pole of opinion many
affiliated conclusions, but these inherent connections have
not been so clearly seen, or generally felt, as to be the
occasion of much theological bitterness. Theists have not
uniformly declared themselves in favor of an inherent
moral law, nor have atheists pronounced always in behalf
of the law of pleasure. So carefully and cautiously has
the law of pleasure, personal and altruistic, been applied
to action, that the practical results reached under it have
not been very different from, nor less desirable than, those
which follow from the intuitive law ; indeed, are superior
to them, unless the latter law is applied with equal discre-
tion and a correspondingly broad survey of the facts.

THE LAW OF CONSECRATION. 95

Yet, in spite of this external approach, the inner spirit in
the two theories is very different. Nor would they draw
near each other as closely as they now do did not each
involve forces logically traceable to the other. The
pressure of motives which the utilitarian creates, he creates
in a nature profoundly sensitive to moral impulses. He
uses a susceptibility quite in advance of his own explana-
tions.

Christ, in the law of consecration, has impliedly taken
position on this fundamental ethical point. He commits
himself to the primary and independent force of the
moral law. He that loveth his life shall lose it ; and he
that hateth his life shall keep it unto Hfe eternal. Christ
returns to this principle, as a primary one, often and in a
variety of ways. Whosoever will save his life shall lose
it ; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the
gospel's, the same shall save it. In each case there is an
opposition of a Hfe of pleasure to one of duty, and an
unconditional subordination of the former to the latter ;
and yet there is the promise also, that the former shall
attend on the latter. Seek ye first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness ; and all these things shall be added
unto you. The implication is that duty and pleasure, as
we conceive them, are perpetually falling apart, and the
injunction is that we are in all instances to pursue duty.
The mind is helped in many ways to catch sight of moral
law, and this becomes at once to it an ultimate law by its
own insight.

The philosophic view has often been that of the Stoic :
that pleasures, as they offer themselves to men, are temp-
tations, and must be encountered in an unconcessive
spirit. This also has often been the Christian view, de-
rived from the words and life of Christ, and has easily,

96 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

though without encouragement from the Master, fallen
off into asceticism. Pleasures are temptations to men be-
cause their sensibilities are not constitutionally harmonized,
and a large portion of them, and that the most important
part, remains undeveloped. The strongest sensibilities,,
those which are the seats of the most immediate pleasures,
must often be repressed in order to secure a proper bal-
ance, even in the passing hours, and much more to secure
a true equipoise in coming years. Still more are personal
pleasures, as opposed to the pleasures of others, obtrusive.
The results on our own happiness of a careful considera-
tion of the wants of our fellow-men are so remote, so ob-
scure, so inappreciable by a selfish man, that there does
not exist, on the theory of pleasure, any sufficient counter-
poise of motives, when we contemplate our own enjoy
ments in direct contrast with the enjoyments of others.
The spiritual view embodied in the. words of Christ
finds the danger of life in this very fact, that pleasures
are so urgent, blind, and partial in their demands, — that
they spring from a constitution so disordered and incho-
ate ; and it confronts this danger with the strong claims
of duty.

The utilitarian is not insensible to these confused rela-
tions of our impulses, and though he phrases the facts
more mildly, he still strives to provide for them. He
constructs a noble ideal of what man and society may be-
come, and brings forward their remote pleasures as rational
counterweights to hasty and sensual indulgence. The
effort is most laudable, and deserves more success than
can attend on it when left to its own resources. If we place
ourselves on the basis of pleasure simply, then each set of
sensibilities as they exist in each of us, no matter what
their present excesses or deficiencies, must define pleasure

THE LAW OF CONSECRATION. 9/

for us, and become our present standard of measurement
in all contrasts between enjoyments, whether those of the
appetites or of the affections ; whether those of the pres-
ent or of the future ; whether those of ourselves or those of
society. But it is impossible for a debased nature to form
a clear and noble ideal ; still less is it possible for such a
nature to enforce on itself the evanescent and faint motives
which accompany such an ideal. Yet such a nature de-
mands these motives at their maximum power, while it
furnishes them at their minimum power. Its means of re-
sistance are in inverse ratio to its dangers. The ideal is
most obscure when most needed, and moral forces vanish
in the very presence of the work to be done by them.

The utilitarian is aware of this also, and invokes the aid
of the community against the stupid and refractory indi-
vidual. Morality, it reasons, is required for the common
well-being, and a public sentiment will enforce it on those
otherwise slow to concede it. Here, again, many things
are overlooked, or too favorably regarded. It is true, so-
ciety requires morality, but there is no other insight save
that of these same blind individuals who make up society
to discover this fact, and to enforce it. Failing in indi-
vidual morality, we fail in social morality also. Society
can not be better than its constituents. Society as a com-
bination of selfish persons may selfishly enforce its own
interests, but such an enforcement will not be converted,
in its very putting forth, into benevolence. It is quite
without reason to suppose that men collectively will
achieve a moral character which does not belong to them
separately, and that selfishness by simple extension will
take the place of good-will.

If we look closely at this method of social evolution, we
shall see that it destroys the autocracy of every spirit,

98 ^ THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

and SO makes virtue itself ignoble. Instead of begetting
virtue, it would tend to extinguish any sporadic virtue
there might chance to be. The individual is driven on by
the many, themselves no more virtuous than he, and
so his action loses true, personal quality. A man is
virtuous by his own convictions and his own incentives ;
constraint removes the very conditions of virtue. Society
is, indeed, the occasion of individual growth, but is not
itself the seat of that growth. Moral life has only one
centre, the heart of man. The view then remains sound,
that pleasures still unharmonized, whether acting on im-
mature powers in the individual or in society, are temp-
tations so blinding the intellect that they can not be over-
come within themselves ; the higher balance must be
attained by a higher law. It is the more noteworthy that
this fundamental principle should have been so clearly
and frequently returned to by Christ, as he also recog-
nizes the fact that pleasure shall follow after, and add
itself to, virtue. He does not allow the pursuit of those
very enjoyments, which are to be consequent on right-
eousness.

Nor is the utilitarian able to define the rational value
of different susceptibilities. He has the one word pleas-
ure, and all other words, happiness, enjoyment, blessed-
ness, must be translatable into it, like prices expressed in
dollars. Pleasures may differ in amounts, but not in
kind. A difference in kind breaks down all computa-
tions. We can not carry into the same market two incon-
vertible currencies. Moreover, different kinds of pleasure,
recognized as such and incomparable with each other, im-
ply a rational ideal, and a rational insight into its terms,
and this is intuition. A mere evolution of pleasures^
acting in the same field in the same way, can not concede

THE LAW OF CONSECRATION. 99

this diversity. A life so diversely made up can only
justify itself by means of a spiritual ideal in which dif-
ferent pleasures play different parts, and are united in
some higher idea. This view is intellectual, permeated
with notions of nobility not to be rendered in terms of
pleasure. Herein is a fatal weakness in utilitarianism.
It insists on pleasure, as if it were a simple fact of one
order, and not many facts of different orders. It is
misled by the unity of the w^ord. If pleasures are one^
they must be all expressible in terms of physical en-
joyments, as these are the initial pleasures. Good must
mean physical good, or that which can be translated in
terms of physical good. Such a theory is pushed forward
in oversight of our spiritual constitution, and assumes
at once a physical simplicity of emotional life which
plainly does not exist. The intuitionalist claims that to
the reason of man, pleasures, in their full variety, have
an instruction and a rendering of their own, and that
we must bring to these facts of our constitution, insight,
as we would to the words of a poet. The utilitarian
claims that these sensible facts, as facts, have in themselves
a governing power which needs only to be applied ;
and this application time is sure to bring. In the one
view, sensible facts are operative through the interpreta-
tion of the reason ; in the other, they are operative by
virtue of their force as facts of our sensitive constitution.

Utilitarianism is also at war with a familiar fact of ex-
perience, which its most acute defenders have not failed
to recognize, but can not explain ; to wit, that pleasure
constantly escapes direct pursuit, and follows on when
duty is freely accepted. Though this principle is not quite
as true of physical enjoyments as of higher ones, still the
law discloses itself even here. Not only does the pam-

100 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

pered appetite rapidly lose the power of appreciation;
labor, exposure, and abstinence so sharpen the appetites
that they bring a keen relish to the coarsest food. Enjoy-
ment is conditioned on robust health, and robust health
demands activity. Labor, therefore, which is undertaken
in neglect of physical pleasures, often meets with a reward
paid in these very pleasures.

With every step upward, the law becomes Increasingly
clear. Self-culture, if it is sought in a self-conscious spirit,
brings with It many petty and personal irritations, — evils
which It Itself creates for Its own annoyance — and, as
culture, easily misses that large and catholic feeling on
which the power to grasp knowledge so much depends.
The direct pursuit of honor Is still more difficult. Men
seem to conspire against rendering honor which is claimed,
even though the claim Is based in justice. A neglect of
honor, even a certain scorn of It, is not an unfavorable
condition of securing it. This Is not due to any perver-
sity in men, but to a strong feeling that the most honor-
able action is the most self-forgetful one, that noble purposes
move outward with least thought of one's own interests.
Disinterestedness Is a supreme social virtue, and meets, as
society increases in intelligence, a supreme social reward,
— a reward in turn which is not measured by the good
achieved so much as by the sacrifice incurred. The quick-
ness and depth of discernment which men often bring to
this quality are not a little surprising, when we remember
the under-current and upper-current of selfishness every-
where present. There are to be seen, amid the passions
and prejudices of men, many examples of praise foolishly
and unjustly bestowed ; but In spite of them all, the law,
that honor is not to be sought, manages to disclose Itself
in a signal way. No characteristic is more acceptable to

THE LAW OF CONSECRATION. lOI

men than generous self-forgetfulness. The immediate
annoyances, on the other hand, which an eager desire
for honor brings to its possessor, are very great, and go far
to compensate any gains in its pursuit.

When we come to the spiritual affections, we find that
self-forgetfulness, as pirit Hfted above its own pleasures,
is of their very essence. Patriotism, benevolence, love,
mean this outward vision of the mind and heart, and the
reaction of these virtues on the happiness of the person
who exercises them turns on the singleness and sincerity
of this spiritual sight.

The facts, then, of the rational world do not, even in
their present mixed form, accept the law of pleasure, no
matter with what sagacity it may be laid down. If the
pursuit of pleasure is insisted on as a law, — even though
it be made as broadly comprehensive of the pleasures of
others as it is possible it should be and retain its own in-
centives— it can not be followed as a law without involv-
ing failure. Its spirit is too contracted for the terms with
which it has to deal. Under the narrow experiences and
brief periods of animal life it may be apphcable, but under
the varied experiences and long periods of human life it is
not apphcable. Facts return upon us too remotely, by
too circuitous routes, and with too much reference to the
inner intent of conduct, to make this a safe law. The in-
junction under which we must take up life is a profound
fear of its inherent forces, and a slight fear of its accidents;
a profound fear of God, and a slight fear of men. A
tempest of wind may fill the air with dust, and create
many dangers ; it leaves the highways unaltered.

Morals as enforced by Christ, and by most great teachers
of morals, involve a notion of law, and a power to discern
that law. What, indeed, would morals be without a law.

102 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

The utilitarian Is not content with such a result, and seeks
for a law of morals in the joint action of men, having found
no place for it in their individual action. He makes it a
product of the collective life rather than of personal life.
This is every way an ignoble transfer, and a feeble effort
to find in many what can not be found in any one of the
many. Yet the law, if found, must in some way be trans-
ferred again to the individual, and become the guide of
his action. It can not be transferred otherwise than by
fear and pleasure, or by insight. To transfer it in the first
method destroys at every stage the disinterestedness and
rationality of the law, and makes it one of sensibilities to
which society in part is the medium. There can be
no nobility of action which does not turn on individual
endowments of insight and obedience. To remove the
moral law as moral from the thoughts of men is wholly to
debase it.

Intuitionalism recognizes a law of morals that, like
other laws, calls for study, and is caught sight of only
slowly and by sustained effort. It is seen not in the
heavens but on the earth. It is a law of conduct, and
must recognize and cover all the facts of conduct. It lies
in the facts it marshals, but it lies there for the reason of
man, and not for his sensitive organism simply. It ad-
mits of no abstract, absolute statements prior to experi-
ence, and aside from its concrete forms, but it gathers
light in and with these forms. It is not to be regarded as
a mystic sentence written on a wall, waiting the transla-
tion of a prophet, but it is to be sought into as it is and
where it is, in rational actions whose relations are ration-
ally apprehended, and whose results are daily disclosed
in every variety of pain and pleasure. These pains and
pleasures must be known in their moral values ; in the ways

THE LAW OF CONSECRATION. IO3

in which they vanish at one point and reappear at another ;
in the manner in which an immediate pain returns later
as a pleasure and a pleasure as a pain ; above all, in the
subtile spiritual transformations which they undergo, with
a constant reversal of primary character. What intuition-
alism claims is that conduct, being understood, offers a law
of order to the reason. When this statement assumes
the form of the greatest good of the greatest number, it is
still reason that pronounces on its adequacy and gives it
its authority.

A stoical attitude of defiance toward pleasure is partial
and inadmissible in morals. It is not the attitude of
Christ. He came eating and drinking. He entered freely
into the pleasures of all. In some particulars the position
of Epicurus is superior to that of Zeno. It does not hide
or strive to thrust into the background the facts that are
to be dealt with nnder the moral law, — the infinitely
varied facts of human happiness. The estimate of life
was made too exclusively in terms of pleasure, but these
terms do most extendedly express its quality. It is these
facts of human well-being, but partially understood and
daily to be studied, with the clearer facts of the human
constitution, that, spread before the^ind of man, give rise
in it — not elsewhere — to settled convictions as to the lines
of action which are fit to be pursued, — which ought to be
pursued ; lines not absolute, yet which plainly involve
fixed principles. These snatches of vision are vision, and
put the moral nature on the same terms of growth as the
intellectual nature. No inquiry is excluded, diligent cor-
rection is demanded, pains and pleasures are expository
terms, — are the colors which play in the light in the dis-
closure of things ; but in all this medley of things laws are
seen, — seen, as all law is seen, by the reason — principles

104 TPIE WORDS OF CHRIST.

emerge, and the ultimate conditions of good order and
good order itself come into the spiritual vision. Among
these principles are justice, veracity, good-will. " It is
impossible to live pleasantly," says Epicurus, *' without
living wisely and well and justly, and it is impossible to
live wisely and well and justly without living pleasantly."
To make this passage truly significant, we must contrast
wisdom and goodness and justice with pleasure, and be
ready to affirm that the law of these virtues is the condi-
tion of well-being. Pleasure becomes an index of charac-
ter, a declaration which in a long series of years discloses
the nature of the moral forces at work. It is not the root
of wisdom and virtue, it is their fruit ; something which
is the product of that harmony of life that these have
brought about ; something which discloses the ultimate
mastery of virtue over life. If we overlook the interpre-
tation which pain and pleasure bring to human life, we
shall make bitter mistakes ; if we guide ourselves by them
without first expounding them in the laws they help to
declare, we shall make still more bitter mistakes. As
physical pains and pleasures are terms of diagnosis in
therapeutics, so all pains and pleasures are a revelation of
the forces at work among men.

But this relation implies primary constitutional laws
which underlie these results, and which may be discerned
and obeyed. The power to see a law as a law is the
supreme function of reason, and belongs to reason alone.
The utilitarian may summarize his system as the pursuit
of the greatest good of the greatest number, — and a very
excellent summation it is — but we were with him as
moral beings, discerning good and evil — not simply
pleasure and pain — long before he reached this succinct
statement ; as moral beings, also, we decide what is the

THE LAW OF CONSECRATION. 105

greatest good of the greatest number ; and when this is
satisfactorily settled, it is still the insight of our moral
nature that announces this pursuit as a law of righteous-
ness. Indeed, the failure of simple utilitarianism is no-
where more conspicuous than when it approaches the end
of its labor. Let it reach and stand facing this its final
statement, or any other statement it may prefe^^; Avhat is
to convert it Into a law ? As merely comprehended it is
not a law. Nothing can make it a rational law, save the
insight of reason. Turned into a law in any other way,
its enforcement is tyranny, — the spirit loses its own
autocracy. We wait patiently for the utilitarian to make
his ultimate appeal. To what can it be made, save to the
mind itself, in its comprehending power? If he ventures
to go elsewhere for authority, we must denounce him as
the accomplice of tyrants. How profoundly Mill felt
this, when he expressed his willingness to go to hell rather
than obey a command he did not himself approve, even
though put forth by God himself ? There is no escape
here, unless the utilitarian dares to say that this law of
the greatest good of the greatest number is a physical
one, and so a fact that cares for itself. The case is not
much different from that presented by the statement, two
and two make four ; make four to what, to the senses or
to the reason ?

All great virtue in its greatness implies a law in-
wrought in conduct of which it has caught sight, which it
is pursuing, obeying. Such a mind has faith in the law,
faith in growth under the law, faith in an ideal state
toward Avhich this growth is directed. It never confounds
the passing terms of expression in pains and pleasures
with the ultimate principles which they expound. Such
a mind derives its nobility from the nobility of the truth,

I06 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

as the eye gets its lustre from the light. It understands
what is meant by principle, and plants itself upon it,
believing it to run far beyond its vision, and to constitute
the real connection of the past with the present, of the
present with the future.

This leads us to the second conviction of intuitive
morals, which accompanies this of law and grows out of
it, — that of immortality. The moral law is one of great
scope, and demands corresponding time for its fulfilment.
It is a law that is fitted to balk and bafifle the mind in its
first application, to bring it endless perplexity and ap-
parently useless disaster, unless a sufficiently long time is
granted it to take in the full circuit of growth. The
moral law, in common with other laws that pertain to life,
has a period, looks to a progressive unfolding, no part of
which is complete without the whole. We may make this
our present life a laborious beginning of the line of action
demanded by virtue, but we can reach no proportion, no
symmetry, in our action ; we can enter on the conflict,
but we can not bring it to an end ; we can put before our-
selves noble purposes, but we can not attain unto them ;
we can reach advanced positions of growth, but the full
fruits of growth will still lie beyond us. The moral law,
limited to the present, offers the practical anomaly and
theoretical absurdity of a law of life which includes a
longer period than that granted the being whose it is.
As this incongruity takes place in the highest region of
conscious life, none could be greater, none more unfortu-
nate and disappointing. The moral law does sustain
itself, and must sustain itself, by a large range of motives,
corresponding to the breadth of its own government. To
cut it short is to cripple it. Vice may win brief victories
over virtue, as folly may over wisdom. A large instru-

THE LAW OF CONSECRATION. 10/

mentality demands a field commensurate with its opera-
tions. The longer the period, and the more extended the
interests involved, the more certainly do wisdom and
virtue declare themselves, and win their own. They are
the laws of grand aggregates, the ultimate and most com-
prehensive laws of rational life. Not more does the moral
law call for time, that it may fully justify itself, than does
time call for the moral law, that its years may be pregnant
with events of increasing moment, and its lengthening
spaces be filled with the great spectacle and growing
achievements of rational life — the life that reason yearns
for.

So deep is this necessity, that those gifted with a pro-
found moral nature, who have lost the faith of immortality,
have, in the effort to escape spiritual suffocation, substituted
the life of the race for that of the individual, and have
striven to draw from the perfections of humanity motives
large enough and lasting enough to drive the moral
mechanism of their own natures and of society. The
effort is a noble one, and the only one which remains to
them. It is a convulsive struggle to hold on to the life
that is escaping them. It is a grand testimony to the
depth of moral aspiration in the human spirit, and to
the labors of self-denial it will gladly undertake in its be-
half. The impulse is full of refined benevolence. The
misfortune is that it can only retain a ghost-like image of
the hope which belongs to it. If men individually are
ephemeral, if virtue in each of them is forever incipient,
if it proposes duties which are never met, and attainments
that are never made, then an endless procession of these
abortive beings loses nobility, and has no power to rouse
the mind to hope. What we are in the inadequacy of our
aims our children must be in their aims. It is a blind

I08 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

passion of parentage which leads the father to sacrifice
himself for the son, with no certainty that the son can be
essentially better than himself. The dignity and inde-
pendent worth of the father must be maintained for his
own sake, and for the sake of his son ; and when the
son absorbs the life of the father, he is likely to waste
both lives. The son is rich only as the father is rich also ;
good can not be forever thrown forward, for each son is in
turn a father. What is true in the narrow relation is true
also in the broader one. No generation can find its own value
in the next generation, or rightly sacrifice itself to it.
Each generation in succession must be an heir to its own
life, and so an heir of the life that has gone before it,
and so a fitting parent to that which follows it. There
is no possibility of rolling up moral values by imbeciles,
by those who have themselves no part in them, and so
pushing the accumulated mass on and on, hoping that
some worth may at length attach to it, or some place of
lodgment be found for it. An incipient and disappointing
experience can not be completed by a thousand repeti-
tions ; each, rather, is a fresh aggravation. If virtue as a
law is out of sorts with us, it will be out of sorts with our
children. The gains that are possible from generation to
generation, even if these gains should remain possible on
the hard terms of a speedy mortahty in full vision, would
have no permanent significance. The incongruity would
every moment accompany them, of powers withering in
the bud. The manifest increase of this evil in the enlarge-
ment of the blighted powers could bring no correction of
it. It is his abuse of powers that assuages our grief at the
death of a man ; the loss of perfected powers would
become at every stage less bearable.

It is a strong spirit that can retain its purpose, when the

THE LAW OF CONSECRATION. IO9

means of its accomplishment are disappearing ; it is a
vigorous soul that can preach a synthesis of humanity,
when humanity is passing at every moment under the
hopeless and remediless disintegration of death ; when the
only unity that can ever be achieved for it is like that
of a mobile centre in a cyclone. Whence are the motives
of the average man to come, which shall lead him to push
forward development, when development itself is so
partial and so futile a thing — a little grace of motion in
atoms that are taken in and thrown out along the paths of
force.

Under such conditions true wisdom seems to be ex-
pressed in a sober Epicureanism, that allows itself to neg-
lect no pleasure and to become the slave of no pleasure ;
that undertakes no great labors because there are no suit-
able returns for them. Such a spirit, slightly tempered
with Stoicism in the endurance of inevitable evils, would
seem, under the condition of mortality, to be the spirit
most in harmony with the conditions of man. An enthu-
siasm and nobility that are not called out by facts, nor
sustained by facts, near or remote, physical or spiritual,
are ill-sorted and vaporing, a supersensuous chivalry of
the soul that can create no light, and may easily waste
the light there is. The reason that they now help us is
that they now stand in profound accord with the consti-
tution of the mind, with immediate and remote facts.
When virtue is once convicted of foolish excess, it must
lose its hold on sober minds.

The words of Christ, in their self-denial, retained their
wisdom and inspiration, because his calm, clear vision
ranged over an immense period, and united the efforts of
incipient virtue to the results of its mature strength, be-
cause he contemplated a new life in its entire circuit. He

no THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

not only allowed things to move forward to their comple-
tion, he saw them in their completion, and gathered his
motives from them in this superlative form. The light of
a spiritual life fell upon his face, he was fanned by winds
from an invisible world that caught up his words and bore
them outward. He brought life and immortality to light,
by taking them each moment into the circuit of his
thought and by reflecting them in his speech. His words
without this inspiration and this faith would become the
dying tones of a bell in an exhausted receiver. No vio-
lence of motion could remedy the want of a suitable
medium.

The secret of human life lies largely in its hold on time.
A quick, tight grip of the times that are nearest us means
sagacity. A wide reaching out to the full measure of our
lives is wisdom. An over-passing of life in our thoughts
and plans is the virtue of religion.

Intuitive morals, resting upon a rational law, and claim-
ing the needful time for its fulfilment, imply a present
want of harmony in human action, inchoate and unbalanced
conditions, which are to be brought forward in growth by
the mind's own efforts. At this point of power and re-
sponsibility the moralist plants himself. There can be no
flinching. To yield here is to allow an inroad of the physical
and the necessary into the field of the spiritual and the
free. He claims for himself conduct in its entirety, and
sets up over it the moral law. Compromise and conces-
sion, which modify this position, are impossible ; the neces-
sary extinguishes the free, and the free excludes the
necessary. Moral elements do not wait upon the growth
of physical ones, nor even of social ones. It is their office
to take possession of the one class, and to call forth and
guide the other. When the good thing that may be done
is present to the mind, the duty enters with it.

THE LAW OF CONSECRATION. Ill

Under these conditions — the presence of a supreme law,
time for its full development, and powers ready for
obedience — intuitive morals demand consecration ; im-
mediate, and unflinching obedience. This obedience ex-
presses the real relation of the moral law to the facts
ordered by it. The harmony of the facts is only to be
obtained by the supremacy of the law ; this is what law
means. The confusion and malformation of the facts are
due to disobedience. We are to see as first that which is
constructively and ideally first; and which will bring
order and beauty into all secondary relations.

The law of consecration is also demanded as the only
sufficient source of strength in moments of conflict. The
moral struggles of life take place between the accumulated
inducements of lower impulses and the more remote and
indeterminate proffers of our spiritual nature. The
strength that is to suffice in this conflict must be of a
complete and transcendent order; a movement of faith
and not of sight. As long as any doubt remains in the
mind of the superlative force of the moral law, or any
feeling that law is found in harmonizing the interests
which crowd the visible horizon, we shall be open to con-
cession which will sweep the ground from beneath our feet,
and leave us to battle for spiritual life against forces as vio-
lent and as variable as the waves of the ocean, each separate
onset threatening ruin. Under such conditions nothing
gives the peace of assured victory, but the law of conse-
cration, held serenely in the soul. The grand moral force
which often showed itself in Stoicism was nothinsr more
than a somewhat blind assertion of the just domination
of the inner life over all its external accessories and against
all passing dangers. Herein were the elevation and the
value of Stoicism, in a stanch assertion of moral manhood.

112 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

The young man that drew to himself the quick sympa-
thies of our Saviour in his effort toward a well-ordered
life, was brought abruptly to this test of consecration, as
the most direct means of disclosing to him that his formal
beauty of action was not sufficiently sustained by the
inner force of the spirit. Go and sell that thou hast, and
give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven ;
and come and follow me. He was called to do this diffi-
cult thing that his strength might be measured by it ; that
an obscure w^eakness and misdirection of effort which
were lurking in his moral constitution might be disclosed
to him, and that he might begin at once to make those
higher attainments which were open to him.^

That this supremacy of the moral life is not an impos-
sible or even very rare fact among men, history makes
plain, and, in doing it, it also discloses the supreme energy
which accompanies complete consecration. It is not so
much the harmony of moral impulses that tells on the
progress of the race, as it is the force of these impulses.
There has been no extended renovation, no marked move-
ment onward, without the unflinching action of some
minds in some fresh moral direction. The convictions that
prompted the effort may have been partial ; they may have
brought severe limitations to intense truth, adding bigotry
to liberty ; they may have carried with them manifest mis-
chief, but the indispensable and valuable element has
been thorough-going obedience to an independent moral

'Strauss and others make sharp criticisni on the manner with which Christ
dealt with this rich young man, and, taking the injunction, Go sell that
thou hast, with other passages, regard Christianity as containing an ele-
ment at war with industrialism. It is true that Christianity is not a gospel
of political economy simply, that it builds upon and over the foundations of
labor the superstructure of a higher life, but it does this in no antagonism to
industry. Christ's method with the young man was exceptional ; his injunc-
tion was specific, not general. It involved simply the priority of spiritual to
pecuniary interests ; of the laws of the kingdom of grace to those of wealth.

THE LAW OF CONSECRATION. II3

conclusion. In a choice between a Luther and an Erasmus,
the flow of events will always accept Luther as the con-
trolling force and fact. Harmony waits on energy ; sym-
metry, on life. Not till a point of conviction bordering
on fanaticism has been reached, do men begin to be
moved by their fellows. This arises not from any inferior
moral value in harmony, but from the fact that the har-
mony men usually attain to is one of feebleness and not
one of strength ; one in which great things are sacrificed
to little ones, and not a harmony in which little things
are gathered up in the shadow of great ones. An equi-
librium which arises from hesitation is a balancing of
powers, not a use of them. It is a first interest among
men to secure in some direction the moral force which
shall express the vigor of the moral law, while this
law will later gather to itself all collateral aids. Complete
and symmetrical as are the teachings of Christ, there is no
effort to set them in order one against another. They are
each incisive in its own direction, and they occasionally
bear the impress put upon them by the narrow and inert
habit of mind which they assailed. Resist not evil ; but
whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek turn to him
the other also. It is easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom
of heaven. These statements, like a strong bow strongly
bent, fling the arrow of truth toward the mark with stern
purpose, though after-thought is called for to unite them
perfectly with subordinate and sustaining truths. Men
readily forget that the effort to understand is a large
part of the advantage of understanding. The law of con-
secration, while it may seem for a moment to mar the
harmony of life, is yet the fundamental condition of that
harmony. The harmony the soul is to attain Is not that

114 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

of many equal things, but of many subordinate and su-
perior things gathered up in one supreme movement. The
fir gains its symmetry by a continuous push upward and
so outward ; the spirit gains its symmetry by an obedience
to its own law which becomes free and delightful, and
more and more includes all that is in keeping with it, or
in any way enriches it. The power of movement carries
with it the grace of movement, and the dominance of the
dominant idea easily accepts all that properly partakes in
it. When the ship moves, it obeys the helm. Weakness
in action arises from busying ourselves with little things
and feeble counsels ; power in action, from a controlling
purpose that gives value to all that is associated with it.

We have, then, afresh to mark the moral compass of the
life of Christ. He clearly announces the fundamental law of
morals, in every grade of it. The life is more than
meat, and the body is more than raiment. No man can
wisely sacrifice the health and beauty of the body for that
which clothes it, nor the force and balance and tone of life
for that which feeds it. There is in every moral relation
that which is inner and higher, to which the outer and
lower must submit itself. This is the principle: Whosoever
will save his life shall lose it ; but whosoever will lose his
life shall save it. Here, by a subtile shifting of the word
life from the centre to the circumference and back again, we
have a telling contrast between the spirit and its surround-
ings, and a clear assertion in it not only of prior worth,
but of an organic power able to carry with it everywhere
complete beauty.

Not only does our Saviour penetrate in his instruction
to the core of our moral life, he supports his words by all
the motives needful to make them effective, and embodied
them in a life wholly expressive of their nature. Mak-

THE LAW OF CONSECRATION. II5

ing way for religious liberty, he encountered the blind-
ness and bigotry of his nation, and laid down his life that
he might win it again for himself and for the world. He
thus marked out the only path that leads or ever can
lead upward, becoming to us the way, the truth, and the
life. The one central, working law of our moral nature,
that of sacrifice, reaches its culminating expression in the
cross of Christ ; and so that cross in turn becomes the
symbol of consecration, the highest activity of our highest
thoughts and affections. These moral foundations can
only fail us, when our moral constitution itself gives
way. If this rendering of the spirit of man in its nature
and laws of growth is not a true rendering, the work
of Christ is superseded ; but if these principles reach to
the centre of our being, they carry with them the
Messiahship of Christ. The question is not a remote
one, but one just at hand. If a supreme hold must be
taken on spiritual truth in utter obedience as the con-
dition of moral beauty, then is Christ the lord of life.

CHAPTER VII.

Individual Growth.

The speech of men is full of words expressive of dis-
interested actions and noble qualities, and these words
find familiar application to their own conduct and attain-
ments. These words necessarily diminish in number and
decrease in scope, when the characters of men give little
occasion for them and no incentive to their use. We do
not behold virtues with our senses, nor yet apprehend
them in the abstract ; they are a complexus of qualities
given us in our personal experience. The virtues of others
will be lost to us, if we do not in some degree share them.
Purity in man, as in water, is a condition of reflection, at
least in the region of right action.

Though this principle, that the glossary of all spiritual
words must be found in ourselves, admits of considerable
qualification, it is none the less one of profound signifi-
cance. As men are dependent on the perfection of a
mirror for a complete view of their own faces, so are they
dependent on the well-ordered images given in their own
characters for insight into the characters of those about
them. Even vice itself may disclose itself but narrowly
to the vicious mind. Mean qualities and narrow moral
endowments begin at once to put fearful Hmitations on a
knowledge of the spiritual world. The point at which
this principle brings the severest restriction Is in our
apprehension of God. That our idea of God is a reflec-
tion of our own moral nature is a fact involved in an

ii6

INDIVIDUAL GROWTH. II7

inevitable relation, and one that carries with it serious con-
sequences. Out of this dependence have sprung the worst
results of faith. The immorality of the immoral com-
munity has been a contagion extending even to the gods.
When a nation's gods are perverted, the evil is radical, to
be overcome only by a spiritual revolution. A steady induc-
tion of evil is set up between the visible and the invisible,
by wdiich all mischief on the one side repeats itself on the
other. The bad man in dealing with bad men, spurs on an
evil action by the evil conception which precedes it. He
creates for himself, in his interpretation of human con-
duct, conditions which to his mind call for injury, even
giving it the appearance of justice.

It Avas in part at least this sense of the steady and
appalling reverberation of evil which the heavens reflected
down upon men, that made Epicurus and Lucretius so
anxious to push the gods one side in thought, into a region
of remoteness and indifference, that simply human move-
ments of mind and heart, rid of these perverting impres-
sions, might proceed again in a more quiet and truly moral
way.

The Stoic endeavored to attain the same result by
bracing his mind up to moral resistance ; by affirming
its superiority to, and independence of, the conditions
assigned it.

Yet this interpretation of the Unknown by the known
arises from the very nature of the case, is the process by
which the mind correlates its motives with its own moral
states, and lives in a world of harmonious and coherent
impressions ; the very process also by Avhich it moves for-
ward, putting before itself at each step a new, better,
holier, more inspiring Idea. It Is the condition of growth
that a larger thought, a purer affection, a stronger faith,

Il8 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

should enable the mind so to apprehend the moral force
of the Universe about it as to stand with it on increasingly
free, loving, and living terms.

Christianity, in its actual development, has constantly
stumbled at this very point. It has not been willing that
the conception of God and his government should remain
fluent, ready to receive every increment of knowledge,
ready to gather definition and fulness of expression with
every increase of the power of reflection in any human
soul, the conception itself a partaker in growth and ready
to subserve all the purposes of growth. It has not been
willing that the revelation of God in Christ should pass
from disclosure to disclosure, till we, beholding as in a
glass the glory of God, should be changed into the same
image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of God.
Notions which should have remained flexible, becoming
inflexible, have bound close the thoughts of men to the
conceptions of past centuries; doctrines narrowly con-
structed and severely rendered, have misrepresented the
moral force of the presence of Christ in the world, and
have so far betrayed it. The Christian religion has in its
turn become subject to the inadequate opinions of past
generations, and once distorted has accumulated growth
along these lines of distortion. It has been slow to affirm
its perpetual freedom, or, when this freedom has been lost
to regain it again, and resume its progressive unfolding.
The more wrinkled the mirror, the more firmly have men
believed that it expressed the facts reflected by the mirror.

This difficulty and this danger men do not escape either
within or beyond the circles of faith. The pessimism of
the pessimist is the distillation of his own thoughts with
which he embitters the world about him. The gratitude
of a grateful spirit looks out with longing, loving eyes on

INDIVIDUAL GROWTH. II9

the things before it. Questions of evil and of j^ood turn
on the responses which events awaken in our own sensitive
organism; we can hardly judge them independently of
these sensibilities. It is no accusation against the laws of
physical life that an inebriate falls off from pleasure. It
is no disparagement of the spiritual universe that those
who are but partial participants in its methods do not en-
joy them. Sight is made for eyes, and sound is addressed
to ears. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and
spiritual pleasures are spiritually enjoyed. The deep
questions in life are for this reason not to be quickly an-
swered, for they imply an experience commensurate with
their own magnitude. Are there spiritual pleasures, and
what is their value to those who enjoy them ? That those
who miss them shall misapprehend them is a matter of
course. The plans of the Universe can be comprehended
only as they pass into a measure of completeness. This
is not because supernatural powers are called for, but
because natural powers are misdirected and perverted.
Music is the product of sweet bells, not of bells jangled
and out of tune.

Two things then plainly follow : faith must preserve in
full degree the freedom of progress, and this progress
must express itself in the perfection of individual charac-
ter. This is the double and inseparable process, a better
apprehension of the harmonies of the spiritual world, and
a better rendering of them in life. Not to see is not to
do, and not to do is not to see.

Noble natures have shown their nobility in making self-
culture a chief aim, in an insatiable longing in some direc-
tions or in many directions for a personality of high quali-
ties. They have sharply distinguished between things
which pertained to themselves, and those which simply

120 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

belonged to their surroundings. Less noble natures strive,
in a surreptitious and impossible way, to appropriate as
their own the advantages of their environment. It is the
power which the acquisition of wealth implies, and the
power incident to its expenditure, when lodged, in the
hands of true men, that feed the pride of its foolish pos-
sessor. The feast is often a wholly ideal one, an illusion
of the world in which we live.

Men have not overlooked the problem of self-culture
and its essential relation to real good, though they have
given it very inadequate treatment. They have caught
sight of it from time to time as the one door by which
men must enter into life ; and when religion has neglected
it, or mistaken its method, it has done so to its own great
confusion. Manliness and righteousness must coalesce, like
the two images of two eyes, or we shall have but a dis-
torted vision of the world. The more obvious forms of
power, as physical strength, intellectual acuteness, and ex-
tended knowledge, have been sought for; the more urgent
moral endowments, as courage and self-assertion, have
been cultivated ; a full circle of refined sensibilities has
been coveted ; and, as even better than this, a certain im-
perturbability of the moral life has been desired, by which
it is separated somewhat from the lives of those about us,
and made to rise above the events of our own lives ; but
self-culture has rarely been conceived as a steady expansion
in due proportion of all our sensibilities, by which we at
once possess the world and separate ourselves from it.

Courage has perhaps been the most universally esteemed
quality among men ; though they have often overlooked
the narrow forms in which it has been offered, and the
mean service to which it has been put. Self-assertion, as
an expression of courage, has shared this honor. That

INDIVIDUAL GROWTH. 121

men should have been so profoundly impressed by cour-
age, and in so many ways cultivated it, involve an appre-
hension and movement deeply right, though these indi-
cate a very tardy and immature moral development.
Courage is a first condition of morality, as it is of all con-
structive strength. It is the stamina of life, and must be
had at all sacrifices. The moral implications, however, of
the value we assign it, are like those of the adjective
"honest," when employed to define the most noteworthy
feature of a great statesman.

We see in such a novelist as Thackeray, and in such a
hero as Harry Esmond Warrington, that courage, physi-
cal powers, vigorous appetites, and a fair circle of generous
impulses, as the raw material out of which manliness may,
by and by, be manufactured, are looked on with a very
partial eye. Men seem content to see them each and all
wasted for a time in a career of dissipation, while they
console themselves with the presence of an unusual poten-
tiality not yet hopelessly lost. They seem to fancy that,
in some obscure way, vice is the coarse, succulent ferti-
lizer that lies at the roots of virtue. The world has ex-
perienced great difficulty in its self-cultivation in detect-
ing partial forms and superficial shams, and so in overcom-
ing the idea that virtue is one of these shams and the
attribute of a milksop, or, at the very least, that there is
a partial antagonism between virtues. Fortunate natural
endowments have lorded it over acquired powers or virt-
ues, as an indigenous aristocracy despises the interlopers
of enlightenment. The hypocrisies and failures, which
easily attach to hard-earned virtues, favor this view, while
the robust health of natural endowments cast off more
readily these parasites. Not till the eye of reason grows
clear and firm at this very point can self-cultivation

122 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

thrive. We must see that dissipation dissipates admirable
quahties, that reckless action wastes generous impulses,
that passion blinds the mind, and that the greater the
endowment the more is it to be regretted that any portion
of it should be lost. It is the self-abandonment of those
lowest in indulgence that we should look on as a present
fact with most allowance, since to them it is well-nigh the
only thing that remains, — since with them it hastens a
catastrophe that were better over. But how can we
wisely so deprecate the end of vice and yet make light of
the beginning ? How can we admire the fool that throws
coin after coin into the ocean, simply because that in
hand is not the last one ? That which defiles a pure gar-
ment is to be regretted, but the latest filth of a foul
one, who thinks of it ?

In our division of virtues, oddly enough, and with
telling force against ourselves, we try to maintain the
womanly moiety unabated. The first touches of vice and
low habit have no fascination for us here. So Thackeray
retains *' one or two pure hearts to love and pray for his
hero," — the ugly chrysalis that is still thought to contain
the butterfly demanding this warmth of pure affection to
bring it out. And so, indeed, it does ; nor is it that
which we regret, but this confounding of the moral vision
in finding our way. The glamour of half virtues, or it
may even be the perversion of virtues, bewilders the eye
of reason. We fail to understand, once for all, that every
thing which is virtuous is noble, and only that is noble
which is virtuous. There are no feminine virtues and no
masculine virtues; there is only virtue one for all, and in
all its forms beautiful. There are feminine faults and femi-
nine temptations, masculine faults and masculine tempta-
tions, but there is one wealth only, no part of v/hich we

INDIVIDUAL GROWTH. 1 23

can afford to lose. He that is less pure and justly sensi-
tive than a woman is by so much less admirable than she.

So weak and timid are men that they escape hero-
worship with utmost difficulty. The brilliant intellectual
endowments of a Napoleon, though disassociated from
almost every beneficent quality, almost every quality truly
admirable, bewilder them ; they become like charmed
birds before the eye of the serpent. They are willing
that high poetic sensibilities, like those of Goethe, should
feed eagerly on the affections of the spiritual world, even
though these are consumed thereby, like a rose eaten of a
worm. They are well-nigh ready to say : Herein is the
archetype of the spiritual world ; the plant rightly nour-
ishes the higher life of the insect. A sense of collision thus
subdues the mind. Excellence is at the expense of excel-
lence. Every question is one of sacrifice ; all construction
is a process of waste. Heine, in connection with the
most extravagant adulation of Goethe, adds : '' About his
mouth a frigid stamp of egotism might have been noted ;
but that trait belongs to the immortal gods." The repug-
nant expression finds its way up to the immortal gods
from our own crude fancy, and then comes back to us as
if heaven-born.

The best defence which men have offered to this feel-
ing of conflict, a feeling inevitable in a narrow range of
vision, a feeling which it will require the broad sweep of
eternity wholly to remove, — disclosing how completely
the inferior end is included in the superior one, how liber-
ally all things are added unto us, when we have once and
for long sought the kingdom of heaven — is, aside from
the words of Christ, Stoicism. Stoicism simply asserts the
noble thing and stands by it, escapes the losses of conces-
sion by despising it. Its strength is the sturdy strength with

124 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

which it makes its affirmation, and waives aside a too nice
discrimination. But Stoicism is holding fast in darkness ;
what shall give us light? True, extended, continuous,
concessive, firm self-culture is the condition of light, the
condition of seeing both what is and what may be. Who
shall become to us, in this culture of the spirit, the way,
the truth, the hfe ?

There are obviously new and superior principles of self-
cultivation contained in the method of Christ, — principles
we are not again to lose sight of. It is not necessary that
we should assert that these truths were entirely unknown.
Human nature and the divine method have been the same
from the beginning. Snatches of vision may come at any
time. What we are chiefly Interested in are those declar-
ations of method on the part of Christ which are so clear,
full, and opportune, as to be a revelation, and remain with
us as one.

The passive virtues received in the instructions of Christ
a new position. Blessed are the poor in spirit ; for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek ; for
they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the pure in
heart ; for they shall see God. So long as the tyranny of
the world seems, even to virtuous minds, its most out-
standing feature, courage, self-assertion, and pride offer
themselves as the most direct feelings with which to meet
it. Without more or less of these qualities, one can hardly
secure a footing for the other virtues he may possess.
Humility and meekness have a flavor of servility, and
seem to lead to servitude. It Is only a broad outlook
over the spiritual world which discloses the merely primary
character of these active virtues of resistance and resent-
ment, which have played so important a part in the his-
tory of the world, and places quite above them in serene

INDIVIDUAL GROWTH. 12$

Strength and composure the passive virtues of humihty
and meekness. As long as the law of progress is thought
to be, and measurably is, one of violence, and men expect
to overcome evil with evil, to oppose hate to hate, to
meet exaction by exaction, to overmatch pride with pride,
and to undermine cunning with cunning, courage will be
the one manly virtue. Indeed, so essential is courage, that
it will always remain a necessary quality of any character in
any good degree admirable. It is courage alone that puts
us, pressed upon by our fellow-men, in possession of the
conditions of independent and thoughtful action. Ti-
midity is even more the foe of rational than of physical
hfe.

But when we learn that evil, though it may check evil,
can not exterminate it, that the productive power of virtue
is found only in virtue ; under this higher and more
spiritual law, we see that our proper defensive weapons,
and even offensive ones, are the passive virtues. It is a
far greater result in the conflict with sin to escape un
injured, than it is to suffer and to inflict injury. Out of
the quiet endurance of the unruffled spirit there proceeds
the only true spirit of conquest. Christ set his disciples
the task of renovating the world spiritually. To do this
in any good degree, they must be able to keep at bay the
evils of the world, so ready to call out corresponding evils
in their own hearts. When the disciples wished to call
down fire from, heaven to consume a village of Samari-
tans, Christ told them that they neither had learned his
spirit nor knew their own spirit. It is the immediate re-
sult of any evil to extend itself under its own terms.
Anger kindles anger, pride is offensive to pride, dogmatism
bitterly censures dogmatism. This extension of evil arises
from the fact that like conditions of evil exist in so active

126 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

a form in all hearts. Passive virtue is the power to re-
press these germs of passion in our own bosoms, to pre-
vent the entrance of passion from abroad, and to use freely
and wisely the palliatives by which we assuage its heat in
others.

The passive virtues imply a more extended experience
than the active ones, and an experience more thoroughly
spiritual. Humility, as a Christian grace, is but a fit im-
pression on the sensitive mind of the largeness of the life
upon which it has entered. It is the first product of the
greatness and purity of the spiritual world, as it begins to
disclose itself to us. The brutal man of arms may despise
any aesthetic sentiment in a comrade, but his coarse con-
tempt is a result of his coarse nature. Those outside the
threshold of the spiritual kingdom may not feel the awe
and humility of those who are passing it, for this light
falls on us only as we enter, and only then begins to cast
its shadows. Humility is not the result of depression,
but of impression ; and is the antecedent condition of
large attainments and extended hopefulness.

Arrogance and pride shut us out of the spiritual treas-
ures of the world. What the world really has of treasure
is held in the minds and hearts of our fellow-men, and the
doors of these storehouses are not opened to us when
we knock at them loudly and threateningly. The blossom
does not unfold itself more coyly to the warm touch of
light than does the human spirit to the gentleness of the
human spirit. Pride and scorn hedge up the only paths
by which we can enter the Kingdom of Heaven as one of
affection. We must find our way into the grottos that
open on the sea, when the sea is at rest. Boisterous
waves will only bring shipwreck at the entrance. Es-
pecially would meekness seem to be an unsuitable virtue

INDIVIDUAL GROWTH. 12/

with which to subject the world, yet the promise is, the
meek shall inherit the earth. When the mind is partially
free from the first illusions which attach to conquest and
ownership, it is plain enough that these are more often
than otherwise the means of expelling one from the real
spiritual possession of the world ; and that one must enter
into the life of the world simply by nearness, appreciation,
fellowship. The passive virtues spring up later than the
active ones, and turn more exclusively on the inner power
of the mind. Christ in his instructions rises at once to
the level of these virtues, and presents them distinctly as
characteristic of his kingdom, — as the peace which per-
vades it. His method as a moral method claims this
mastery of moral forces within the soul itself.

An allied truth is found in the last beatitude. Blessed
are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and
shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my
sake. The school of virtue is as certainly one of suffering
as of enjoyment. Henry Martyn expressed this depend-
ence in the words, " to beheve, to suffer, and to love."
As sensitive beings we would not choose this relation.
Nor does it seem to have any more permanent foundation
than that of the immature and superficial quality of human
thought and human virtue. Trying to give it a deeper
relation than this the ascetic has perverted the ministra-
tion of pain and passed through suffering voluntarily in-
flicted to, one knows not what, states of mental and moral
imbecility. If we are to grow by belief through suffering
into love, belief and love must attend on every step.
The evil borne must be evil wrongfully inflicted, and the
end had in view must be the well-being of men. In such
an experience, in which the thoughts and feelings are
conjointly, vigorously, and soberly moved toward the

128 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

Kingdom of God on earth, insight deepens, purposes
strengthen, affections flow out and in amain, and we
have the conditions of a mobile experience, and so of a
truly masterful hfe. In accordance with this principle of
consecration, Christ would have his disciples exultant at
the spiritual gains which they had in hand, and not re-
gretful at the physical losses that might accompany them.
Nothing that deepens and develops our lives is to be
deprecated. The pearl of great price having been found,
there is to be no prudential hesitation in its purchase.
Indeed, all men order any earnest discipline in this same
way. Honor among men of honor is not allowed to bear
any offence. Each man must put his life at risk on the
instant to remove the danger. Noble things are not to
be won by ignoble sacrifices.

This early assertion of the passive virtues and of disci-
pline through suffering are indications by Christ of the for-
tunes of his kingdom, as to be sought after on the spirit-
ual and not on the physical side of hfe. This impression
he makes even more distinctly, when he assigns service to
his disciples as their true insignia of honor. He that is
greatest amongst you shall be your servant. Men usually
place their stakes of happiness in the fulfilment of the
desires, and their promises of personal development in the
acquisition of powers, which will in turn minister to the
desires. Christ places the motives and the rewards of
action in the affections, and of cultivation in the unfold-
ing of those powers by which we enlarge the lives of
others, ourselves entering in to this enlargement. When
we direct attention simply to self-cultivation, the end
seems definite and noble. We do not doubt that any
power of body or of mind is to be coveted, and that these
powers are to be measured in value by what they enable

INDIVIDUAL GROWTH. 1 29

us to do, and by the support which they render each
other. In the pursuit of self-cultivation, we feel that we
can not well be at fault ; for disciplined powers will lend
themselves to any undertaking. Yet in this effort after
culture there is a perpetual postponement of the real
problem of life ; there is a getting together of material
without determining the kind of building we will erect
with it. We are wont to think that when we have
accumulated power the use of it in securing well-being
will be simple and direct ; whereas in this lie the whole
difficulty and mystery of life. Superior powers employed
under inferior impulses only disclose more rapidly and
more hopelessly the inadequacy of the ends which are
offered to them. There can be no doubt that a large
share of the pessimism of the present time is referable to
this failure of self-culture, and arises from efforts directed
toward aquisitions that have no purpose sufficiently com-
prehensive to maintain and reward the labor involved. The
man whose powers are meeting with inadequate returns
must inevitably be tinctured with pessimism.^ As soon as
powers have been acquired and are waiting expenditure,
every question as to the ends and gains of life is thrown
back upon us. He who pursues wealth may satisfy the
mind for a time with an object of apparent and of real value,
and find in his work many enjoyments incidental to the
play of his faculties. That the question of ultimate well-
being is simply deferred may not be apparent to him, till
wealth has been secured, and he is compelled to decide
how he will use it. He is then very likely to discover

^ The conspicuous pessimism of Schopenhauer was accompanied by a
fatalistic hedonism. When the feelings, after a vain pursuit of pleasure, be-
gin to eddy back on the soul itself, we have all the conditions of pessimism.
An adequate external object can alone sustain that full flow of sentiment,
which is the buoyant force of a hopeful and pleasurable life.

I30 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

that the returns in happiness are by no means what he
hoped they would be, and that to that degree he has
wearied himself for nought. These results are ameliorated
and disguised, first, by a continuance of pursuit, blind as
it may be, and so satisfying the mind simply with its own
activity. The good to be gained is thus not the wealth,
but the labor that acquires the wealth. The devotee
trudges on refusing inquiry; he takes the objects he has
in view at the world's estimate and his own instinctive es-
timate of them. Failure is thus at length identified with
the fatigue of old age, into which it lapses and is lost.
The incidents and accidents of life, as it has passed along,
have imparted to it whatever worth it has had. As these
wither it withers also. Such a life never reaches self-con-
sciousness, never proposes to itself a sufificient purpose, or
finds increasing satisfaction in its fulfilment. Life ripens
only by decay. A second fact by which results of so in-
ferior and unsatisfactory an order are made decorous and
bearable are the elegances and refinements of life, its beau-
tiful shell of appliances. While these have a very real
value, they have a much greater apparent one. Ostensibly
they are every thing. If mature minds and thoughtful
minds do not find them to stand in happiness for what
they represent to immature and thoughtless ones in
the full excitement of pursuit, they only sadly whisper
this fact in moments of depression to each other, and then
strive to forget it. If the hue-and-cry of half a county
has run down a hare, laugh at it, and try again. Public
sentiment has but one opinion which it is willing to offer
on this subject ; to distrust this would be to paralyze all
effort, and pulverize all motives. The man who has run
his race and won his crown still believes himself to
be blessed, as fully as ennui and overworn faculties will

INDIVIDUAL GROWTH. I3I

allow him to be. The sensational verdict of life is thus
accepted as at least less distasteful than the spiritual one.
These results of action are also in a measure hidden, and
more fortunately hidden, by the partial development of
the affections which accompany them. These are the
vines which still climb over and cover the ruined walls.

A pursuit of knowledge as a chief direction of self-cult-
ure has the advantage that it gives rise to varied activity,
and proposes an end capable of being pushed forward
indefinitely. The mind is not called on with the same de-
cision to realize on its investments, or at any moment to
count up its gains. Knowledge is easily accepted as an
ultimate good. It may seem at the end as at the begin-
ning of labor, that all which is needed is more time, more
strength, more effort. There also may be present the
noble faith that this knowledge will, in some unknown
way, accrue to the benefit of men.

The real solution of the problem of individual growth,
is the discovery of some adequate purpose to which all
one's powers may be directed. If there is any such purpose
in life, if there is any centre at which all gains can be
gathered and held, then life is not a failure. If there is no
such purpose, though the fact may be more or less hidden
from us till we near the end, by the many illusions preva-
lent among men, life becomes a melancholy flashing up of
hopes that flicker and die, and he is most fortunate who
wakes latest, or wakes not at all, to this discovery. He
who is to do any thing in any degree adequate for the cul-
tivation of individual powers must meet this question of
the primary end of life. Powers are to be cultivated in
reference to it, and in its pursuit. The soul can not go
on simply to exhaust itself by activity; the reaction of re-
wards sufficient to sustain and remunerate effort must be
provided for.

132 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

There is no hesitancy in the method of Christ. We are
to seek first a kingdom of righteousness on earth, and find
our enjoyments in the affections which are called out by
this end in its pursuit and attainment. Christ relies on the
affections developed in building up a kingdom of truth,
as sufficient incentives in happiness for the effort de-
manded. We have not here a self-culture which leaves
the end of life undefined, and can only partially estimate
the relative values of our powers, — a self-culture that when
it seems most complete may easily find itself the farthest
off from any sufficient goal. We have from the beginning
a simple and direct pursuit of the highest end, and one
which grows in magnitude as we approach it, and calls out,
in each stage of unfolding, emotions increasingly large,
pure, and peaceful. Action and repose, hope and posses-
sion meet in it, and life is roundabout and balanced.

Men do not and will not trust the affections as sources
of happiness. Having accumulated powers of any order,
they begin to expend them in reference to personal ends,
and so these powers, in their return of pleasure, sink to
the level of desires, passions, appetites. A large fellow-
ship with men, one so large as to be winnowed of the self-
ish impulses that cling to more narrow relations, is not
accepted as the secret of life. A little may be done grudg-
ingly, but men do not often venture freely out on the
theory of action laid down in our spiritual constitution.
Yet the happiness that is attained is plainly found in this
direction. A household whose members even measurably
conform to this law is the seat of the best enjoyments.
Truth and right assiduously sought for between men call
forth at every step feelings of the highest order, feelings
that crave nothing beyond themselves. If there is any
sufficient theory of individual growth, if there is any root

INDIVIDUAL GROWTH. 1 33

of permanent life in the human spirit, which can justify
it to itself now and forever, it is plainly this sympathetic
union of men with the unfolding race of men. If the
vision seems chimerical, it is only because it is still too far
off from our craven thoughts, — because such long spaces of
development still lie before us as to weary our childish
minds. When we cultivate all our powers, and find their
adequate use and reward in a pursuit of the well-being of
men, we have attained the primary conditions of individ-
ual growth.

This discipline looks to the most extended dependence
of man upon man, the most perfect union of man with
man. It involves a ^' synthesis of humanity " under con-
ditions of prolonged and complex development, passing
up in each man into a full consciousness of a pervasive
hfe of thought and affection in all tov/ard all. So it has
been in great periods of art ; the impulses of men have
been unusually volatile, sympathetic, and extended.

Life alone begets life, and the spiritual life of each per-
son is drawn out toward the lives of his fellows. No por-
tion of one's spiritual environment is superfluous in refer-
ence to growth. Each step of consolidation in families,
classes, races, nations, nationalities, evokes those larger
thoughts and more extended sympathies which make this
advanced organization possible. Failing at any point of
these fitting ties between men, society sinks to that next
lower combination at which they are found. Each power-
ful and free nation, all concord between nations, testify
to the conditions of growth as those of enlarged and
enlarging fellowship.

When religion separates its duties from those we owe
to men, it easily becomes fanciful and fanatical, and
misses the forces which are working spiritual progress in

134 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

the world. But when religion takes as its own this very
field of the moral relations which hold between men, —
between men and God — it adds the highest incentives to
those already present ; it has before it an urgent and defi-
nite work and the largest inspiration for its accomplish-
ment. When Christ indicated it as the primary petition
of his disciples, that the Kingdom of God should come on
earth, — a kingdom whose pervasive law is that of love,
whose worship gathers men side by side, as they unite
in saying : Our Father who art in heaven — he gave them
the most distinct principles of development and the
most comprehensive and constructive aim possible, — one,
in every stage of pursuit, fitted to deepen and enrich the
entire manhood. We see, indeed, in it abundant occasion
for the passive virtues. The way is neither short nor
easy, nor free from any kind of vexatious retardation.
The disciples of truth must possess their souls in patience,
must expect great things only as the product of great
labors, must have their hold upon truth tried and deep-
ened in every variety of way, and suffer the expulsion of
partial views, narrow impulses, timid and ungenerous
sentiments, by every variety of hard discipline. It is
thus, and for this end, that patience becomes so noble a
virtue, the power to bear the assay by which the gold of
pure thought and gracious affections is set free. The
impatience, the complaints, which are the vociferous off-
spring of the desires, which assume that nothing is needed
in the attainment of happiness save gifts of advantage
which may better be conferred now than later, are re-
placed by gentler incentives full of deep insight, coveting
nothing before its time, wilHng to abide in a discipline
which, without impoverishing the present, infinitely en-
riches the future.

INDIVIDUAL GROWTH. 1 35

In no difectlon is the wisdom of the method of Christ
more manifest than in his clear discernment that culture
comes through worthy work worthily done, that the
spiritual world is constructed on work, and that good
work brings its own renovation. A training of this order
takes place under the clearest, most practical, and best-
sustained motives, lies most immediately in our every path,
carries with it the greatest variety of experiences in our
solution of the spiritual problem of our own lives and the
life of the world, and sustains our strength at each stage
of progress by a perennial overflow of feeling.

A first condition of personal cultivation is a clear
understanding that it aims at power more than at posses-
sion ; that little, therefore, can be given to the aspirant ;
that he is to covet only the conditions of trial and attain-
ment, and be forever postponing the present and pursuing
the future, yet so wisely postponing and so wisely pursu-
ing that the full possession of the one and clear promise
of the other are ever with him. There is a balance of char-
acter to be sought in two directions: between the claims
which spring from ourselves and those which spring from
our fellow-men, and between the various claims which
arise within us from our own varied powers. These bal-
ances are not to be settled for us, but by us under our
own insight. The convictions which shape the Kingdom
of Heaven are not merely habits, but habits momentarily
renovated and directed by our thoughts.

In making up the harmony between the individual and
the community, the former, as the weaker party, has often
suffered from the latter, as the stronger one. The true
solution of this relation does not lie in exaction or in
defence on either side; these are the make-shifts which
attend on the struggle. It lies in distinctly seeing that

136 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

society is for the individual, and that the individual is in
turn for society. There is just now current a philosophy
of social evolution which breaks down the organic de-
pendence in behalf of the individual, as if he held within
himself his own ends, and could in a measure reach them
independently of society, asking of society only protection
in the pursuit. This is a very insufficient solution of the
great problem. The growth of our physical nature is by
descent, with the accumulated gains of many generations.
Our intellectual strength is equally the product of the
past and present. We think with every man who thinks,
and inquire with every one who inquires. Wise men are
organs in the common life, and they fulfil their functions
in that life because they themselves share it. Still more,
if possible, are men one in spiritual relations. Our moral
life lies in the lines of duty which unite us to our fellow-
men. Here are our affections. There is not a man who
does not, in the degree in which he touches us, alter for
us our spiritual experience. If we ignore him, he still
stands by our path to cast on us an evil eye of hate or
reproach or repugnance. Indifference is the frost of our
spiritual climate ; love, its warmth. Excellences in men
are the light and beauty in our sky; vices in men, its dark-
ness and clouds. When we let men alone, it is simply
because our vision is too narrow to include them ; when
we draw near them and do not bless them, and are not
blessed by them, it is because our life still suffers from
disintegration and inner weakness. The true balance
between man and society is that by which we freely give
all, — subject to the laws of mutual profiting — and so are
able as freely to take all. Our giving must not impover-
ish or debase us, for that will impoverish and debase the
gift also ; and in the gift we must find the fulness of our

INDIVIDUAL GROWTH. 1 3/

personal life. Nor must the gift impoverish the receiver,
for this again is its loss. We can not transcend in dis-
tinctness the image of the apostle, under which we are all
one body, and members one with another. Each organ is
specialized for itself and for the body, by itself and with
the body ; and no profitable division is here possible.
The more complete the service it renders, the more com-
plete that which it receives. So every step of individua-
tion among men must open the way to a higher and more
complete organization. The power and integrity we may
have won only prepare us for more efficient and safe
giving and receiving.

Christ secures the first equipoise in life by uniting us to
men in the most hearty and extended service. There can
not be a Kingdom of Heaven save as it embraces men
on these terms ; nor can we enter it save as we have
suffered, point by point, the corrections which wickedness
and weakness call for, and have won, point by point, the
insights, sensibilities, and harmonized powers which con-
stitute the dower of virtue. Spiritual life must lie between
many pure hearts, and must be as comprehensive as
its entire field, whatever that field may be. It can ac-
cept, no more than the body, an interior division. The
ocean feels at every point its remote surfaces and distant
boundaries, though they remain far below the horizon.
Under this form of discipHne, Christ distinctly stated to
his disciples that his was a gospel for all the earth.

A second balance which we are to attain in self-cultiva-
tion, and one in which men are more readily interested, is
that of our own powers and impulses. This balance
comes second in logical order. Until we understand the
field of our powers and the law of their activity within
that field, we shall not apprehend their true harmony.

138 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

As that law is a moral law, and as morality lies between
man and man, we must first determine our spiritual sur-
roundings before we can settle the appropriate method of
activity under them, and the relation of powers called for
in our work. Not till we discover that there are impera-
tive claims coming in on us from all sides, do we learn
that in becoming the servants of the world we may also
become its heirs. This is a part of the secret of Christ,
and a secret open to us and yet hidden from us in many
ways in our daily experience. The mother gains her
wealth in her children by the labor she bestows upon
them. What we have done in any spiritual enterprise is,
as in an industrial undertaking, our plant in connection
with it. An ascetic spirit, a fastidious spirit, a selfish
spirit, must at once obscure every question of self-culti-
vation.

This relation of our lives to others imparts immediate!)'
clear light in the treatment of our own lives. One
who overlooks exterior duties, or shakes them off in
behalf of a more undisturbed development of his own
powers, enters on a barren method of spiritual exhaustion.
He acquires that of which he can make no satisfactory
use; his ideal character falls out of relation to the spiritual
world, and loses all fruitfulness within itself. Life is fruc-
tified by life. Happiness arises from the relation of our
sensibilities to our environment, and, in the long run, as
the commanding element in that environment, from their
relation to man. When we inquire, What is to be done in
society, and what can we best do ? the problem of life is
very much simplified, and the lines of cultivation in
its primary features are laid down. The aid Ave can, from
our powers and position, best render our fellow-men will
disclose the discipline we need, and this discipline will, in

INDIVIDUAL GROWTH. 1 39

turn, in its reflex action upon us through the entire
circuit of our spiritual constitution, do the most possible
for us. Herein is a practical application of the principle,
that we can not be wise without being good, nor good
without being wise. Wisdom and goodness unfold to-
gether, and must together be sought and attained. Not
only are they mutually explanatory in reference to each
other, they create by their interdependence immediate
and successive claims, which maintain our lives in con-
stant and pleasurable interplay. Goodness prompts the
action and wisdom discloses the method. Wisdom di-
rects the way and goodness rewards the effort. The
adequacy of the motives and the adequacy of the means
enable them to sustain each other. Culture is not so
much the result of acquisition as of varied action ; is not
so much statical, a poise of powers, as it is dynamical,
a balance of forces in motion in reference to an end.
Motion in the spiritual world, as in the physical, makes an
equipoise easy and delightful, which can only be achieved
with difficulty or not at all at rest. One sweeping along
on a bicycle maintains a ready balance between conflict-
ing forces, and quickly combines them for his own ends.

Individual growth lies in a widening of vision, a corre-
sponding deepening of feelings, and a ready direction
and mastery of action ; lies in more intense unity of life
with more scope of life. Old questions are answered
and new ones are asked ; the mind uses and enjoys what
it gains, and so makes ready for more. The pursuit by
each one of an adequate object, the building on earth of
the Kingdom of Heaven, gives mastery by uniting the in-
ner and the outer life. We escape doubt and dogmatism
as distressful conditions ; we slip between that pride and
that humility which bring overthrow; the knowledge

140 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

which ends in imbecility and the ignorance which is
imbecility we leave on either hand, and press forward
toward the mark of the prize of our high calling in Christ
Jesus — manful powers well trained in the kingdom of
grace.

This method of self-cultivation is at one with the laws
of love and of consecration. We win life not by seeking
it, but by devoting it. We start with the cross, we accept
the sacrifice, we enter into eternal life. This method
is at the farthest remove from a refined dilettanteism,
and presents the sharpest contrasts with it in results.
We may seem to have gained much less, but will, in fact,
have won much more ; and that in the degree in which we
have understood and shared the spirit of Christ. This
temper will never issue in that languor and profound dis-
couragement which take away all incentives to effort, and
hide its very direction. So far as this spirit is present
there is health, and health accepts all labors and trusts
all promises.

We have, in the teachings of Christ, a philosophy of
life, with its practical and working forces. Christ lays
down as his method of self-cultivation, growth, under the
discipline of the world, with the inspiration of the highest
ideas, by action directed toward the well-being of men as
expressed in the Kingdom of Heaven. What other,
or safer, or fuller, way of life can we find than this? How
can we avoid returning to this way after each digres-
sion from it ?

CHAPTER VIII.

Social Growth.

Individual life seems to present, and does present, a
large field of secluded and personal activity. The sensi-
tive nature at times is appalled by the absolute separation
and isolation of its own experience. Close contact with
men, habitual intercourse with friends, still leave the flow
of the inner life unbroken. The hands that are stretched
across this gulf are shadowy, and may at any moment be
withdrawn. Or if one feeds on the senses, he is only pre-
paring himself for a deeper and more hopeless experience
of loss. One is alarmed at the solitude of his own
spirit, at the many things that are to be thought, felt,
and borne alone. Selfishness greatly enhances this soli-
tude. The selfish man seems steadily to pluck up and
cast out, as weeds from a garden, all sincere interest in
others, and all partnership by others in his own life.

Yet, if we look more broadly and closely at human life,
we shall see that it is entirely impossible to separate the
individual from the community, that the plane of activity
for every one is assigned him by the community, that the
rise and sinking of society is like the upheaval and depres-
sion of a continent — it bears every thing with it. Even
Simeon the Stylite, in all his despite of human things,
would soon have climbed humbly down from his column,
if his admiring fellow-men had all perished. The individ-
ual is thus as strikingly dependent as he is independent ;
and while he always reserves a kingdom for himself whose

141

142 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

borders no man can pass, whose authority no man can
usurp, the nature of that kingdom and the region in
which it shall lie turn almost wholly on the cohective
history of man. Any words of instruction, therefore,
which are to remain with men, must have application in
both directions, inward toward personal life and outward
toward common life.

Though society, both in the formal laws which bind
men together in the state, and in the more numerous
though less formal customs and sentiments which guide
and restrain them in the intercourse of the community,
has reference to the common well-being, it has none the
less sprung up through the incitements of individual in-
terests, and been improved in the pursuit of them by
the slow entrance of broader principles. The common
welfare, extendedly conceived and distinctly sought, and
individual interest, narrowly taken and deceptively fol-
lowed, are thus the two extreme phases of impulse
between which the growth of society takes place. It
hardly lacks altogether, even in its lowest forms, the higher
incentive ; and never, in its best forms, lays aside the in-
ferior motive. The marvel of the world is, that individual
interest poorly apprehended and wastefully pursued has
borne men toward the goal of a social life, broadly illu-
minated in its common rights and common possessions
by principles both of justice and beneficence.

If society originates in the need of protection, that pro-
tection is not so much the result of general counsel as of
individual strength, the pursuit by some one man of his
own interests in providing for the safety of those more
immediately useful to him and dependent on him. The
love of power and sympathetic concession to power are so
native to men, that they at once take the foreground as

SOCIAL GROWTH. I43

compared with any deliberate consideration by each and
by all of their common interests. The fundamental con-
ditions of order are deeper than the thoughts of men.
Individual interests are so interwoven with the common
interests as to drag them forward with themselves. The
spiritual career of society lies in the slow transfer in posi-
tion of these incentives, making the common welfare in-
clude and bear onward individual advantage.

In periods of general conflict so plainly is the individual
dependent on the state for safety, that all influences con-
cur to subordinate him to the state, and to put the state
itself in the hands of those who can and will wield it with
vigor. Safety is the first gift of society to man, and in
early society safety means strength, and strength means
subordination. It is not surprising that the Greeks and
their greatest philosopher, Plato, should subordinate the
individual to the state, the single organ to the great or-
ganism, one of whose separate functions it was perform-
ing. As long as pressure from without is the occasion of
union quite as much as attraction and construction within,
the code of war will prevail, and the citizen, like the sol-
dier, must take the position and accept the dangers unhes-
itatingly which the state assigns him. Nor is this unjust
or unwise, for the citizen and the soldier are one, and
must feel the presence of one absorbing claim.

When this pressure is removed, or materially reduced,
when safety is a matter of course, and the divided aims of
individual life are pushing in all directions, quite another
view takes possession of the thoughtful mind. The phil-
osopher is no longer impressed simply with what the indi-
vidual owes society, but also with what he suffers from
society, the many ways in which his action is anticipated
and thwarted by the state, the degree in which he is

144 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

dwarfed by this overshadowing power. The danger most
urgent, the interference nearest, are no longer those of
enemies, but those of rulers ; and the question becomes,
How shall the simple citizen reserve himself and his own
from the all-embracing and importunate claims and pro-
visions of society ? Immediately there springs up the
opposite theory : that the individual is the primitive seat
of rights ; that the state is a voluntary organization whose
function is the protection of these personal rights, and whose
just powers are derived from its citizens. This doctrine
as nearly disorganizes society as it possibly can, and from
the oppressive unity of the past, we escape into the
sporadic freedom of the present, — into extreme individ-
uation.

But this view, as the product of peculiar and transitional
conditions, is no more ultimate than the previous one.
When men contemplate the goal of human society, and
the truly magnificent attainments open to the race collec-
tively, they see at once that we have no less need of the
conjoint strength of society, in the free combinations of
all its members, than of the strength of each of them in-
dividually. No resources are lightly to be thrown away ;
nor, as we progress, to be deemed incompatible with the
safety of individual rights. The individual will often, in
the freest putting forth of his own powers, reach circum-
stances in which he is so dependent on the conjoint action
of those about him, that his own efforts will be greatly
reduced in value, if there is no general organized method
of sustaining them. The vice, the ignorance, the preju-
dice of a few may undo or retard the social progress of
many; and leave society the product of its poorest rather
than of its best sentiment. It is the right of the thing right-
eous that it should have free access to organic conditions.

SOCIAL GROWTH. 145

It would also be strange if the state, the representative of
all, must forever remain in the attitude of a power to be
distrusted, and limited in service ; and that, too, in the
very degree of the freedom and virtue of its subjects. It
can hardly be the true line of growth in liberty so to order
the state that the more it can be trusted the less it shall be
trusted, and the more disinterestedly it is able to act, the
less it shall be allowed to act.

The true doctrine would seem to be, that both society
and the individual are to find co-extensive and concurrent
lines of development, along which the aid they render
each other will more and more hide the limitations they
put upon each other. The state is for the individual, — the
generic, the t3/pical individual, the representative of every
one within the state — and the individual can perfect his
life only through the state. Society has no interests
which it can wisely pursue aside from the individual, and
the individual has no interests which he can either oppose
to society or long follow without it. More and more, as
we pass from the extreme of personal incentives forward
to that of common interests, shall we find these two terms
of our lives blended in all great achievements and all
inclusive aims.

In the first place there is no perfection possible to
the individual except through and by the perfection of
society. We need not refer to the appliances of civiliza-
tion, and to the immense accumulations of knowledge, as
directly conditioned on the common life ; we direct atten-
tion simply to society as the true field, almost the only
field, of spiritual sentiments, moral sentiments, and actions.
Light is not more the medium of vision, than is society
the governing element of our moral life. The breadth,
the purity, and peaceful flow of the affections are not the

146 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

results of one mind or one heart, but of all minds and all
hearts that are embraced in them. The feelings are in-
definitely mobile ; they spread, like an atmosphere, over
all fields, contract every taint, and bear with them from
remote places health or malaria, according as they meet
with virtue or with vice in their passage. There is noth-
ing so contagious as vice ; not always as vice, but as a de-
vitalizing power, reductive of the moral tonic in the air of
the spiritual world. No man can escape, no man does
escape, this influence ; any more than the world can escape
the heat that steals on from the equator, or the cold winds
that come from polar ice. To be associated with vice, is
to be profoundly injured by it ; to separate ourselves from
vice is to reduce the injury by one degree only — the de-
gree which falls to ^' good society " ; to contend against
it is a further and greater gain ; to exterminate it and re-
place it with virtue is alone fulness of life. Our moral
atmosphere is the atmosphere of the world ; out of it we
are breathing, into it all men are breathing, no matter
how unwholesome the breath that comes from them.
There can be no perfect man till all men are perfect, as
there can be no pure place till all places are pure. Virtue
alone gives scope to virtue, as wit exercises wit. We put,
in our vices and faults, constant Hmitations on each other ;
as we all put so grave limitations on the grace of God
that we do not know what it is. The loving fellowship of
the flower-cup with the light is both the source and dis-
closure of its exquisite tints. Life is found in the most
extended and delicate reactions between itself and its
conditions.

The perfection also of the individual, such as it is, is
gained only by clearly conceiving and laboring for the
perfection of all. The moment this end is lost sight of,

SOCIAL GROWTH. I47

or loses its hold on the mind, that moment the spiritual
nature misses its appropriate impulses, and drops off in
activity. This is, as we have all along seen, the discipline
of Christ, a direction of the vision outward to social ends,
with the enforcement of zeal, patience, humility, hope, in
their pursuit. A view of society, therefore, which makes
it a safeguard to the individual, a fence of law about him
while he seeks his own ends, is a fresh relegation of the
mind to itself, and to those personal objects which have
always brought with them so much mischief. When, on
the other hand, the mind distinctly plans for the well-be-
ing of others, both near and remote, it finds at once its
own discipline in the reconciliation of all interests, and in
their joint pursuit. Organization, not forced but free, be-
comes the ruling idea, and society is made strong, not by
the concentration of strength here and there, but by its
diffusion and reciprocal ministrations. The body, in its
divided functions but common life, remains the apt image
of society in its unity and dependencies, ever extending
outward and deepening inward. The individual, in his
spiritual activity, is so much a part of the whole that he
can attain to no perfection except in the precise duties
assigned him by this very development. To transfer the
centre of life to the individual is not only to break up the
system of things of which he is a member, it entirely per-
verts that intellectual and moral outlook, which defines
the direction of his efforts, turns them into spiritual train-
ing, and brings their spiritual reward.

Again, the grand movement of progress, in which indi-
viduals are made partakers, is strictly in and of itself a
communal one, one that must proceed in the masses.
Here is the bulk of physical human life, from which the
life of each one is taken, and to which it is returned.

148 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

The law of inheritance, as a regenerative power, is involved
in this mass of life, and in its dissemination. For the best
application of the laws of physical inheritance there can
not be too many men, undergoing too great a variety of
favoring conditions, and productive of too many types.
Health and strength may rise to the surface anywhere,
like a mermaid in the sea, from these manifold, subtile,
interchangeable, and but partially calculable forces of life.
No family, no class, no nation can be isolated, without
ultimate loss in the reproductive powers which should
invigorate it. The tentative and incipient movements of
development should have their full range both in their own
varieties and in the variety of their conditions, the superior
everywhere displacing the inferior, and in turn giving oc-
casion to that which is better. The element of diversity,
multiplicity, endless involution, is an essential one in the
problem of life. We all share the gains marked by those
immense strides by which the growing points are trans-
ferred from nation to nation and continent to continent.

Nor are the conditions less communal by which we win,
retain, and enlarge the terms of intellectual and spiritual
strength. Science subserves but a partial purpose, and
runs but a brief career, till it becomes applied science ; and
science is applied in the directions and for the uses that so-
ciety requires. The ministrations of knowledge lie in physi-
cal and mental refinement, and the fitness, completeness,
and universality of this refinement it is which enrich society,
enrich the individual, and give both the occasions and the
motives for further effort. True refinement is something
which the individual can never acquire by himself, nor en-
joy by himself, and which suffers in quality as well as in
quantity by every limitation. Snobbishness, as an exter-
nal defect and as an internal disease, is the result of nar-

SOCIAL GROWTH. I49

rowness ; narrowness always entails this evil. Society can
not be made pure and wholesome and stimulating by
parts, any more than water is cleansed in divided sections.
Motion is the one condition of purity.

The communal character of our possessions is still more
manifest in our moral life. This life is communal hfe ;
the moral law stretches over all this common Hfe, and
lies between every one of its members. If there is any
revolt of any portion of it, not only is morality so far
hmited, it is made correspondingly weaker everywhere.
The law actually operative in the most of men, and in the
best of men in the most of their actions, is that con-
ventional law which pervades society. Manners, — a
minor expression of morals — customs, the written and
unwritten laws of the state, are the products of society
itself in its organic activity, and no man can lift himself
very much, or for very long, above them. His better
theories and better methods must be made operative in
society about him, before even he himself can receive
their full benefit in his own thoughts and feelings. Theo-
ries about virtue are something very different from the
exercise of virtue in its own domain. The moral temper
is a social temper, and in its ruling forces draws its inspi-
ration from the entire body of society. Exclusiveness, in
all its phases, is weakness ; -and may easily be wicked-
ness.

While repudiating heartily the theory that morality is
distinctively a social sentiment, begotten by social condi-
tions, and without any independent enforcement in the
individual, — a theory that makes society as society pro-
ductive of new ideas — we still recognize the fact that the
individual conscience must work its way into the common
convictions, before it arrives at the force and sweep of a

150 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

law. The community is the ultimate seat of efficient moral
power. The individual needs, even for the maintenance
of his own action when it concerns the many, the con-
currence of the many, and society can build no customs
and institutions on convictions that are not shared by
a large part of those to whom they apply. The struggle
which waits upon every man, and makes his life morally
grand, is this very effort to incorporate his convictions
with the code of society, and so to give them the force
of law ; to make them a portion of that social and
political vitality which engenders institutions, outlives
customs, methods, special relations, moral sentiments, and
accumulates the influences Avhich enforce them. The in-
dividual mind and conscience are the active organs of
appropriation, but the processes of assimilation and in-
corporation go on in the social body — the seat of social
strength both for itself and for its several members. The
common convictions of men are the repository of law,
whence the individual in the long run must draw his
supplies, more especially in the transition from generation
to generation. This social sentiment in the moral world
presents a fact of the same order as common law in the
legal world, holding the first principles of law in a plastic
form, shaping and reshaping Its methods.

This being the dependenoe of the individual on society,
and of society on the Individual, that social organism Is
perfect In its two leading products of laws and customs,
in which all is ordered for the individual, and in which
every individual freely submits himself to the general
strength. The general strength stands at once for the
largest aggregate of life, and for the primary condition
of all life. The individual can not In his activity afford
to impoverish the state, another branch of that same

SOCIAL GROWTH. 151

activity ; nor the state to impoverish the individual,
another phase of its own power. We are, therefore, to
seek that combination in which each does the utmost
in consistency with the full activity of the other. Nor
are these two phases of action in any way so belligerent
as to render such a union impossible. If we understand
by an increase of liberty, an increase of powers, freely put
forth and harmonized within themselves, then the just
activity of the state is the liberty of the individual, as it
enlarges the circle of his powers, actual and potential ;
and the just activity of the individual is the liberty of the
state, since it also is in increase of the joint powers of the
state. These blended powers, no more than those of
father and son, exist by exclusion, but by inclusion and
joint increase.

The typical individual is each individual in his generic
qualities and relations. Incentives, conditions, rights, so
far as dependent on customs and laws, are equal in each
case, arising as they do from a common nature. What-
ever limitations any one man suffers, or whatever peculiar
powers he may possess, are personal characteristics, which
the social construction neither gives nor takes away.
Society recognizes them as facts, orders its own action
in reference to them as facts, but does not accept them as
fixed facts ; nor does it provide for them, as such, in its
organic law. The law admits these changeable forces,
but admits them as changeable, and in no way strives to
fix them. Society may neither waste the variable powers
of the individual by overlooking them, nor treat them as
permanent differences, when they are not so. The char-
acteristic of a high social organization is the utmost
extension of the conditions of well-being, whether de-
pendent on customs or laws ; the rendering of aid on the

152 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

easiest and freest terms to all ; an habitual watchfulness
over the general incentives to action ; mobility in the con-
ditions which define classes ; ready terms of concession to
individual endowments.

With this general notion of society, which, if not fully
definite at all points, contains no contradictory elements,
and sufifices to give direction to our thoughts, we ask,
How do the words of Christ bear on those social problems
which are pressing so hard on the minds of men for a safe
and sufficient solution ? We are not to look here more
than elsewhere for a continuous statement or exhaustive
discussion of principles. The words of Christ are ad-
dressed directly to the Insight of men, and never assume
the form of a system, established by proof, pursued Into
particulars, and to be accepted as a whole. They are
fitted to awaken the mind at vital points, and enforce its
attention, while leaving It to Itself In instituting and com-
pleting the appropriate lines of reflection and action.
But principles that hold In them the essential truths of
our social relations are not wanting In the Instructions of
Christ.

The economic relations of society are very fundamental,
both as furnishing the conditions of a refined and purified
life, and as giving, in the pursuit and distribution of
wealth, a constant and common field of moral discipline.
The words of Christ bear very definitely on economic
principles. The twentieth chapter of Matthew opens
with the parable of the house-holder, who hired ser-
vants Into his vineyard at various hours during the
day, from early morning to evening, and at the
close of their work paid them each a penny. This
parable touches directly questions of justice and of
method in the dealings of men with each other, and in

SOCIAL GROWTH. 1 53

the dealings of God with men. It enforces, and seems
primarily intended to enforce, individual ownership. Is
it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?
Ownership, sufficient and final, is the condition of benevo-
lence, and so the condition of the unfolding of the spir-
itual affections. Any claim that trespasses on this pri-
mary right of the individual fatally impoverishes him, and
in the end must impoverish the community. Nor are the
economic losses greater than the spiritual losses. It is
out of our own resources that our gifts must come. If
these are taken from us, we lose all means of good-will.
Nor is there any good-will expressed in that which is
given under a claim. The laborers in the parable were
angered by receiving less than they expected, and were
not prepared to be pleased by receiving more than they
could rightfully demand. When claims run ahead of jus-
tice, they destroy the conditions of amicable relationship.
The parable defines the limits of benevolence and justice,
and does not allow the two by confusion to destroy each
other. Friend, I do thee no wrong. Didst thou not
agree with me for a penny ? Take that thine is, and go
thy way. I will give unto this last even as unto thee. If
we undertake to displace benevolence by justice, we shall
in the end lose justice also. The fundamicntal idea in
justice, as well as in benevolence, is ownership.

The parable also distinctly repudiates a notion of equal-
ity as of the very nature of justice. Confusion of thought
at this point was the occasion of the dissatisfaction of the
laborers ; and it is this confusion which often lies at the
basis of communism, and which is made the ground of
complaint against the divine government of the world.
Inequality may or may not express injustice ; the associa-
tion is not a fixed one. It is very easy for those who

154 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

seem to suffer from inequality to regard it as of the nature
of injustice. There is a very general sentiment that the
inequalities of society disclose either the wickedness of
men or the injustice of God, and ought in some way to
be corrected by civil law. The inequahties presented in
the parable were clear and great ; some had labored twelve
hours, and some one hour. The unfair division took place
also in connection with severe labor, by those who had
borne the heat and burden of the day, and who found
themselves at night no better off than those who had ac-
cepted the light toil of the evening hour. The opposite
principle, therefore, of constant inequalities in society,
which do not in any way trespass on justice and are pro-
ductive of well-being, is fully involved in the parable.
While equality in claims is a fundamental principle, in-
equality in gifts is equally fundamental. A world that
did not yield the same rights to all persons under like
conditions would be one of moral confusion ; a world that
aimed at universal equality would be fanciful and imprac-
ticable, and repress every impulse of enterprise and good-
will. Justice simply involves the protection of rights and
claims ; rights arise from powers seeking their own field
of exercise, and claims from this very exercise of powers ;
but powers themselves are subject to many degrees of
inequality. The equality which is associated with justice
is the equality of personalities. Justice is not permitted
to weigh persons, but only to weigh rights and claims.
The confusion in men's minds arises in part from the in-
aptness of language. Equality is not of the essence of
justice, but only equality before the law ; that is, equality
or oneness of procedure in the law, and in the principles
which guide it. Equality of powers is not a fact, and
equality of conditions thus becomes a chimera ; so much

SOCIAL GROWTH. 155

SO that it implies a state of things not only unde-
sirable, but in its details unintelligible. Justice, imper-
sonality before the law, is the measure of our claims.
Indeed, the two, personal inequalities and social equali-
ties, resolve themselves into the one principle and
its implications ; it is lawful for me to do what I will with
my own. The inequality lies in the possessions and con-
ditions which are my own ; the equality in the fact that
I share the lawfulness which belongs to all men of using
my own, and disposing of it at my pleasure. If each man
has not an ultimate ownership in his powers and the fruits
of those powers, then there is no one valid claim, no equal
principle ; and if the one principle is not respected, then
the diversity of powers is so far lost. The equality in the
claims and the diversity in the powers are inseparable.
Moreover, that which destroys one man's claim, destroys
equally the claim which is brought against it. This para-
ble is closed with a concise statement of the practical
results of the truth recognized in it. The last shall be first,
and the first last. Position must ultimately depend on
the power to receive, rather than on what one has re-
ceived ; on the freedom which we grant to the rights of
others, rather than on the eagerness with which we seize
our own rights. In abridging the work of others, we by
so much abridge our own work. A little held fruitfully,
that is receptively, is better than much held barrenly,
unreceptively.

The comparative indifference of the amount of the first
gift appears in the two forms of the parable of the talents.
In the one form, a single talent is given to each of two
servants ; and in the other, one, two, and five talents are
given to three servants respectively. Both forms are
summed up in the same pregnant principle: For unto

156 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

every one that hath shall be given, but from him that
hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
It would be difficult to find a more important economic
or social truth, or one more readily lost sight of in its
application. The germ of growth is within us, in our own
exertions. God gives to them that have — that Is, to them
who have the disposition to make use of what they have.
This disposition is the one discriminating possession among
men ; all motives are addressed to it, all hopes rest on it.
It is not an alteration in position and circumstances that
is to be sought for, but in the disposition to use them.
As long as we look upoa the discipline of the world as
hard and hopeless, it is certain to be profitless to us.

This principle is thoroughly applied in the parable.
He who had gained ten talents, as standing for the great-
est activity, receives the talent which had been left idle.
Possession passes from the lowest to the highest. Action
is thus not only directly fruitful in itself, but indirectly
draws to itself advantages and gifts. This tendency is
fundamental in human society, and is not softened in the
parable. Men must first look to themselves for help, and
in so doing receive help from all quarters. This pro-
ductive, economic law must be left operative in the con-
struction of society.

These gains, however, being made, there comes in a
complementary moral principle, which the eager doctri-
naire often forgets, but which receives the clearest state-
ment by Christ : It is more blessed to give than to
receive. Other principles are applicable for the sake of
this principle, which springs out of the fulness of our
spiritual affections. We seek our own so earnestly, we
hold it so tenaciously, only that we may dispense it thus
freely and wisely. We give to those who are able to

SOCIAL GROWTH. 1 57

receive, because the gift is thus made most effica-
cious. Our own supreme benefit is found in the gift, and
in the good it works. This principle is the crowning
truth in the words of Christ, and one that men as yet by
no means understand. Indeed, it is a truth that gathers
light only as it is broadly applied. We need to give more
freely ; all need to give and receive more freely, more
wisely, in order that the fruits of good-will may be ap-
parent. This crowning truth in the instructions of Christ
men are slowly approaching. They understand better the
laws of acquisition in wealth than those of use. They
stumble as they reach the goal. They can as yet hardly
be said to believe that it is more blessed to give than to
receive. The practical demonstration of the truth turns
on the breadth and power of the spiritual affections as
contrasted with the desires, and is thus necessarily de-
fective in transitional stages ; as much so as the motives
of civiHzation to a savage, entering reluctantly on its hard
labors. The problem of making wealth is solved every
day ; the problem of using it has only attained a theoretic
exposition by Christ. Civilization has again and again
shown itself a thrifty tree, till the period of fruiting has
been approached, and then the too ungenial cHmate has
blasted all the buds.

Men have believed, and still believe, that wealth spent
selfishly, or in a narrow circle, yields more pleasure than
spent benevolently ; that they can not trust society, can
not return to it what they have gained from it and find it
again restored in full spiritual measure. They limit social
organic force. Organs swollen by their own usufruct,
they seem to think better than organs in active ministra-
tion to the body. They surmount physical difficulties,
they climb intellectual heights, but when they approach

158 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

the very object to be gained, and have only to pitch their
peaceful tents on the broad and beautiful uplands of our
spiritual life, they hesitate, they fail to understand the
new conditions, they insist that the advantages and
disadvantages which have grown up in strife and selfish-
ness shall remain. Thus they reach no moral eleva-
tion, and means become means only in the ministration
of passion. Power, wisdom, and grace are before them,
and they tarry in power, believing that wisdom and grace
are more or less a mistake. It is just here that the whole
force of the Gospel is expended.

This failure to take the highest social principle from the
lips of Christ is seen in the very partial way in which it is
applied, when men first turn to it. They may give, but
give with so little wisdom and love, give in such antago-
nism to lower principles, as quite to lose sight of the
cardinal idea that giving is for the development of power.
A love that seeks virtuous life will be saved from this
error. Giving which is careless giving is not true giving,
as it lacks the giving mind and heart, and can not bear
either backward or forward, to giver or receiver, the
beneficence of a gift. The giving which is more blessed
than receiving is that which pours life into channels of
life, and draws life freshly therefrom. To deny this
aphorism of Christ, is to deny that society is organic
throughout, as well in the higher spiritual realm as in the
lower physical one ; is to believe that ultimate strength is
to be sought by exclusion and limitation and not in
the largeness of our common and divine life ; is to
distrust the possibility of our becoming the sons of God.

Severe things, some have thought inadmissible things,
were spoken by Christ concerning riches, as if their
possession were incompatible with the Kingdom of

SOCIAL GROWTH. 1 59

Heaven. This language is fully intelligible, if we under-
stand it to refer to the spirit in which riches were then
held, and are still so often held, as one that directly bars
the kingdom of grace. In the development of our spirit-
ual life, things are attacked, not so much according to
intrinsic quality as according to their present relations to
progress. The misconception of the spirit in which
wealth should be used is one which turns piety into
formal morality, and, taking from righteousness its love,
leaves it to sink into rightfulness. Just here the column
of advance wavers and falls back. The poor may be
as selfish as the rich, as hostile therefore to the kingdom
of grace; but they can not put this selfishness in so
conspicuous a position, they can not oppose it so directly
to the next steps of progress. The rebuke must fall
where the offence is most manifest. For this reason it
was that Christ strove to help the young man from a
formally correct mood into one spiritually powerful by
bidding him : Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor,
and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come and
follow me. The claim was carried thus far that there
might be no longer any opportunity of confusion and self-
deception, any colHding of letter and spirit. It is just at
this point of faith, a launching one's self unreservedly on
higher incentives, as the eaglet takes the air, that the
mind hesitates ; but this and this only is following Christ.
While Christ puts clearly primary social principles, he as
decidedly supplements them by spiritual ones. We are
not brought to the gates of heaven, without the password
of admission.

Nor"do the instructions of Christ fail at times to bear in
the plainest way on civil government. Yet we are to re-
member in the interpretation of his discourses, that he

l6o THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

habitually abstains from a systematic statement of the
principles applicable to any portion of our experience.
It is not philosophy which he has in hand, but life itself ;
it is not to speculation but to action that he leads us. A
system covers equally the principles in force among
men, and those which are ready to be brought forward ;
those which are sustained by self-interest, and those which
appeal to our affections. A system must also not only
give governing principles, but must carefully follow them
out in their limitations. One who ministers to action,
who calls out life by fresh spiritual impulses, a life that is
to remain free, expansive, constructive, may pass in silence
accepted truths and lines of action sufficiently well-en-
forced, and call attention exclusively to new incentives of
a higher order. Nor need he trace these to all their con-
clusions, but may leave them in their own unfolding
in experience to attain their true balance. A balance in
action is a balance of the feelings as well as of the
thoughts, and is by no means the product of simple specu-
lation. Christ proposes a new life, and so brings forward
with undivided attention the truths which are fitted
to initiate it. If life is attained, it will in due time
and in suitable order make way for all other things ; if life
is lost, truth will perish with it.

Christ enforces service rendered, not service received, as
the proper ground of authority and honor : Ye know that
they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles ex-
ercise lordship over them ; and their great ones exercise
authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you ;
but whosoever shall be great among you shall be your
minister ; and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall
be servant of all. This principle is so far from the
practice of men, that they rule it out of their thoughts as

SOCIAL GROWTH. l6l

of a transcendental order. Yet it is plain that this spirit
of service can alone contend with all evils, and establish
for itself the proper limits of action. Wrongs and rights
will right themselves under gracious impulses, seeking
fitting expression ; ungracious impulses can never
sufficiently, in their antagonism, fence each other off
from mischief.

The same principle receives a broader application in
society. Honor is not to be sought by the disciples
of Christ, but is to be left to fall freely to them in
the simple sequence of right action : Be ye not called
Rabbi ; for one is your master, even Christ ; and all ye
are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth ;
for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be
ye called masters ; for one is your Master, even Christ.
But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.
And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased ; and
he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. This view
of honor, the infirmity of great souls and the folly of
little ones, is as philosophically correct as it is spiritually
elevated. Honor can never be sought without missing
its quality when attained. Honor is like the shadows of
the human face when the light falls upon it from
above ; they help to disclose the nobility of noble features.

Another pungent principle presented by Christ, one
quite in the teeth of ordinary practice and even of sedu-
lously enforced sentiments among men, a principle that has
its counter principle lying at the very foundations of
government, is that which pertains to the manner in
which we are to encounter evil : Resist not evil ; but
whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek turn
to him the other also. Evil as a pervasive and malign
fact among men is not to be overcome by evil. Satan is

1 62 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

not to be looked to to cast out Satan. Evil that is met
by force, which is but another phase of the same evil,
is suppressed, not vanquished. Evil is overcome by good
only, is extinguished in its bitter passion by love only.
The spirit of chivalry, which ruffled up so readily at
offence, and was so quick in its irritability to inflict
injury, was worth something as a school of mere courage ;
and yet disclosed the moral blindness of the period, and
the great poverty of its conception of manhood. It
maintained its inflated pride only by mistaking vices
for virtues. It could not distinguish between patience
which is the cowardice of a servile spirit, and patience
which is the crowning strength of a noble one ; it
could not contrast the choleric heat of self-love with the
purified and quiet temper of love, and see where the
balance of power lies. Virtue of this order overcomes
vice, only as fire extinguishes fire, by a consumption of its
material.

It is true that force, backed by moral impulses of an
impure order, is called on in government and elsewhere to
encounter rampant evil, and secure a momentary lull ; but
its effective power, if power it has, is found in the element
of justice it contains, not in the wrath it expresses. Even
in government, what truth do men more need to recognize
than that the foundations of authority must be found in
justice, and that justice must, in all its limits, lie side by
side with love. Passion is the alloy of justice, not justice
itself. The cruel penalties with which governments have
sustained themselves have been made necessary by the
injustice of their construction, and have given expression
to an inhumanity which is of the very nature of crime.
Men move slowly along the blind paths of force, only
because they have not vision enough to detect the coming

SOCIAL GROWTH. 1 63

light. The wars by which states have built themselves up
against each other have wrought immense suffering, and
have so darkened the spiritual heavens that men have
groped for the highway of morals at midday. What sense
of justice could find admission to the minds of men when
Napoleon was driving North, South, East, West, through
Europe like an enraged beast ?

This principle, as stated by Christ, will have to some
minds a tinge of fanaticism, first, because they may not
have felt to the full the need of the principle, and second,
because they have in their own minds imposed on the
Great Teacher the duty of defining its limits. If for a
moment we reflect on the degree in which this new temper
of patience was the temper of Christ, how completely
unknown it had hitherto been among men, how certainly
and fully it must enter as a condition of regeneration, how
sure it was to be misapprehended and unduly narrowed,
how little men were yet ready to apprehend its proper
limits, we shall understand, I think, that the ends of
action, and ultimately those of instruction, called only for
a vigorous enunciation of the principle of patience, as the
supreme expression of moral power and the great remedial
element in the conflict with sin. If we grasp this prin-
ciple firmly, if we justly feel this just sentiment, all suitable
limitations will be learned as they arise, slowly it may be
but effectively. The present lesson is not to be lost or
embarrassed by anticipating the next.

The counter principle Christ does announce at another
time : Give not that which is holy unto the dogs,
neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample
them under feet, and turn again and rend you. Moral
means that can not be used as moral, are not to be wasted
on physical forces. The supremacy of the moral element
IS to be asserted in a moral realm, and there only.

164 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

Christ more frequently deals with social than with civil
relations, as offering the broader field of action, one more
truly expressive of the moral forces at work, and one ulti-
mately productive, by Its own spirit and possibilities, of
the more formal constructions of government. When
thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends or
thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen nor thy rich neighbors ;
lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made
thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the
maimed, the lame, the blind ; and thou shalt be blessed ;
for they can not recompense thee ; for thou shalt be recom-
pensed at the resurrection of the just. Christ here enjoins
a generous, wise, and considerate extension of social life ;
a use of it not as a means of sustaining personal interests,
but of promoting and completing the general well-being.
The injunction is permeated with the idea that human life
is common life, and that Its social receptivities may lie be-
tween all its members; that it is organic life, and can not
attain its predetermined scope, if any divisive lines of self-
interest enter in. Who, other than Christ, has so con-
ceived society? And yet do not the mischiefs of society
arise from the want of this conception ? What life is there
less than the largest which Is worth as much as the largest ?
And is not this question quite as applicable to that grand
aggregate, human life, as to that inferior aggregate, indi-
vidual life; to that major unit, society, as to that minor
unit, the family?

We may easily misunderstand these words of Christ,
misled by the narrowness of the form of the injunction,
and overlooking the breadth of its spirit. The instruc-
tions of Christ make no effort to dispense with common
sense, or with spiritual insight. When he washed the feet
of his disciples, he did so as a single yet signal expression

SOCIAL GROWTH. 165

of the most needful temper which he had occasion to in-
culcate ; he thereby gave no color of approval to the carica-
ture of this act of humble service by the most luxurious
of his later disciples. This social parable, for so the evan-
gelist speaks of it, lays hold at once of the primary and
most tangible idea, that of a generous spirit, and enforces
it against the old ungracious one which he saw manifested
immediately about him. The error was that little dis-
tinctions of honor were embittering men's hearts, and
that social intercourse was neither sincere nor unselfish.
The form had displaced the substance, the true spiritual
force. We are not, therefore, to accept the correction in
so literal a way as to repeat the same error on the oppo-
site side, as if formal concession can ever take the place of
real interest and generous sympathy. The thing con-
tended for is a casting away of little things and personal
things, and a corresponding broadening of the thoughts
and affections which are the sufficient basis of a laree life.

o

It is a play of the higher nature that is sought for, in place
of a mean, deceitful, unwearied rehearsal of the selfish pas-
sions. This purpose, society should be made to subserve.
The candor with which our intercourse should be or-
dered, is enforced in the injunction : Judge not that ye be
not judged. The more artificial, correct, and explicit so-
ciety is, the more does it avenge itself for the restraints
put upon it in public by indulging in private a spiteful
and malicious criticism. The fellowship that Christ con-
templates is a spiritual one ; hence it is born in good-will,
and grows up with a large participation by all in the gifts
of God and grace of God, which we hold in common.
When social life is built on the second command, and the
second command rests back on the first command, we
shall set nd limits to the outward range of society any more

l66 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

than to Its Inner force. As In the ocean, breadth and
depth will correspond. The condiments of this feast will
no longer be vanity, pride, emulation, the love of honor.

The illimitable movement of moral life is also clearly
put in the injunction of forgiveness. We are not to for-
give until seven times, but until seventy times seven.
The only obstruction to grace is transgression. As often
as this is taken out of the way, life may be renewed, or
rather is renewed. This conception of a clear, conscious
life of divine love, rational within itself, and with
deepest reason taking to itself, by sympathetic appropria-
tion, all terms of life, and yielding all terms to life, is the
dominant idea of Christ ; the Kingdom of Heaven for
which he would have us labor and pray. And there is no
other kingdom for man, no other goal of human life, no
other sufficient salvation for any human spirit. That this
kingdom is attainable is shown by the simple fact that it
lies on our visible horizon.

The obstructions, dangers, delays, which attend on this
life ; the tenderness of the divine parental love which
watches over it ; the blindness and wilfulness of the human
impulses which, taking part in it, thwart it ; the slow dis-
cipline, much to be deprecated and not to be escaped,
which bears it forward ; its final and joyful consummation,
are all set forth in the simplest, clearest, and most divine
fashion in the parable of the prodigal son, a complete
gospel of wisdom and grace within Itself. That such a
parable in Its promise should lie in the facts of this our
world, should be seen by Christ and fall from his lips, dis-
closes, on the one side, the germs of salvation that are
hidden in the very soil of the earth, and, on the other, the
divine sunshine and light of that Word of Truth that is to
call them forth, and to put them in full pdlsession of
these their native fields.

CHAPTER IX.

Growth of Society Historically.

Spiritual growth explains the rational world. If we
omit this idea or weaken it, all interpretation becomes
obscure ; the sufferings of men seem endless and hope-
less. If we conceive this growth clearly, and give it that
first position in our thoughts which it claims, immediately
light begins to fall on the dark way men are travelling,
and we come to see that the path, though long, leads out
of a wilderness into a promised land. The Kingdom of
Heaven is accessible only along the rugged road of spirit-
ual discipline, but being attained in its commanding
beauty it makes quite insignificant even this great labor
of accomplishment. The direction of this growth, the
means which have been used and which remain to be
used in its fulfillment, must be somewhat known, if we
are to understand the relation of Christ to its completion.

We shall certainly find two things, even in a compara-
tively hasty inquiry : first, that the chief evils men have
suffered have been moral evils, and the remedy has neces-
sarily been moral. Physical evils have been severe, intel-
lectual limitations have been constant and great, but any
effort to overcome them has disclosed the fact that back
of them and beneath them, as a soil in which their roots
were thriving, have been moral evils, which it was necessary
to remove as a condition of any permanent improvement
in the lot of men. Neither the physical nor the moral has
long been handled separately successfully. The line of

167

l68 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

development, therefore, in society has from the very be-
ginning inckided voluntary elements, and has shown the
obscure and fitful movements which belong to spiritual
powers. There have been frequent and encouraging
gatherings of favorable impulses, which have borne par-
ticular nations a great way onward in growth ; but these
energies have subsided and been dispersed again long
before any thing like a goal has been reached. It is also
plain, in the second place, that the early stages of social
growth are more instinctive and necessary, and the later
ones more conscious and free ; and hence that the de-
velopment of the race is not only one involving moral
forces, but one in which moral forces increasingly assume
the leadership. Hence it is that Christ, the incarnation
of spiritual strength, becomes, century by century, more
manifestly the leader in this movement, provided for
from the foundations of the world. If it is plain that
this growth among men, now stretching back over many
millenniums, can not complete itself except under this
very leadership, we shall have the strongest proof, and
the only sufificient proof, of his Messiahship.

The formation of nations is the first considerable step
in the growth of humanity. Physical necessities, social
sentiments, intellectual impulses, all concur in securing it.
Safety, the love of power, the fellowship which men,
even the lowest, have with each other in the acquisition
and exercise of power, give occasion to national growth,
to an extended and strong social organism. The col-
lective life takes the lead, and consolidates itself as the
condition of all individual well-being. This stage of
society has been termed its militant form. It involves
firm cohesion, clear limits, sharp conflicts, and the stern
subordination of individuals to the community. The

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. 169

active constructive agent is war, its constant arbitrament
is war.

That the intrinsically horrible circumstances of war, with
its vast power to augment human sufferings, and its bitter
expression of human passions, should be in any way the
means of moral growth, is a fact that discloses fully the
mixed elements we have to deal with, the slow and painful
birth of the higher from the lower, the struggle which life
is at once compelled to enter on with its environment as a
condition of compacting its own powers. That war has
wrought progress, and that war, men being what they are,
has been a necessary means of progress, are plain facts.
Yet war has suppressed human sympathies, called out
brute appetites, and been everywhere and in every phase
of it a startling manifestation of the cruelty and selfish-
ness of men, — if not in all the combatants yet most in-
tensely in the larger portion of them. Yet war has carved
out the first grand organic forms in society and breathed
into them national life. It has been a school of courage,
duty, devotion. Count von Moltke is credited with say-
ing : " Without war the world would stagnate and lose in
materialism duty and self-sacrifice." While not overlook-
ing the truth there is in this assertion, we ought not to
overlook its profound error. War stands to social growth
in something the same relation that sickness does to health.
It indicates disease and helps to eliminate it ; and if suc-
cessful is eliminated with it. War that subserves the pur-
poses of war, to wit, progress, puts an end to war. No
such clumsy and brutal method of change can long ac-
company advantageous change. It is only the worst of
circumstances that can be relieved by war.

The courage that is called out is chiefly physical cour-
age ; and in the direction of this cardinal virtue of courage,

170 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

war works quite as much by the physical means of natural
selection as by those moral means which fortify the mind
within itself. The sense of duty also which war enforces
is a very narrow one, and one of contradictions and blind
limitations. As the heavy wheels of its own artillery rut
the earth, so war cuts into the minds of men certain deep
lines of duty ; outside of these the manifold obligations of
men to men are wholly forgotten. The military roads
that here and there cross the great steppes and w^Ind
through the m.ountains are no substitute for the innumer-
able highways of communication along the fruitful plain ;
no more is the hard muscle of w^ar for all the gentle, pliant,
patient activities of peace. A wave of lawlessness and
crime followed with us the war of the Rebellion, and did
not reach its full force till ten years after the close of that
struggle. War may be a way of escape, but it is a passage
of fire from a burning building.

The second step of growth which accompanies and fol-
lows the first step of combination is that of consolidation
within the nation. Successful war without, gives more or
less of peace within, the nation, and extended communica-
tion and safety make way for the industrial phase of society.
Moreover, this phase early becomes an adjunct of war,
giving it its resources, and also those possessions for whose
preservation and extension w^ar is carried on. The spirit
of war is compelled at once to foster that of peace in its
industrial productiveness. But the second spirit is diverse
from the first, and in development separates itself from it
more and more. The objects which enlarged industry
brings before the mind are constantly interfered with by
war, and when industry accepts the service of war it is
very largely at the cost of Its own feelings and pursuits.
The industrial phase of society springs out of the mill-

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. 171

tant phase, yet tends first to modify it, and then to
displace it. Industry means production, commerce ; and
these mean peace. It means also a restful enjoyment of
the fruits of its own labors, and this desire war ruthlessly
disregards ; war despises industry even while profiting by
its labors, and industry hates war, looking upon its forced
contributions as the exactions of an enemy. Hence in-
dustry tends first to divide society into two classes, the
productive class and the mihtary class ; and later, if op-
posing circumstances are not too imperious, to subordi-
nate the second class to the first.

The industrial period is also in its social tendencies di-
verse from the militant period. The latter consolidates the
nation with comparatively little specialization of individual
powers, interests, and duties. The former is the reverse
of this in its action. It quickens the development of in-
dividual interests and of individual rights. Private enter-
prise finds its own fields of activity, asserts itself in them,
and strives to rescue them from the interference of
government. The first necessity of society lies in the di-
rection of organization, and its first theory of rights is in
the same direction. Society is a supreme need, and also
is it a supreme right. The second necessity and the sec-
ond disclosure of rights lie in the opposite direction, and
the individual comes to be regarded as the primitive seat
of authority, while the state holds from him what author-
ity he, in the pursuit of his own interests, has conceded
to it. In the militant period there is a central life which
makes a very simple organization effective, and gives to
personal liberty but a narrow range of activities. It is
not embarrassed with any theory of rights, but identifies
them at once with force. In the industrial period there is
an extended division of functions and powers, which ren-

1/2 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

ders society, in its various members, capable of much ; but
also one which easily weakens its organic unity. In mak-
ing this assertion we must direct attention to the results
of industrial interests simply, Avhich draw rights, powers,
pleasures, toward the individual in his private activity. We
must not forget that this stage of development gives occa-
sion to a third stage, and may be, therefore, partially ob-
scured by the action of spiritual impulses higher than its
own.

What we now wish to urge is that the industrial phase
is no more complete within itself, is no more ultimate,
than the militant one ; that the two, as opposed tenden-
cies, must unite, as a condition of progress, in a movement
higher than either. If the industrial stage is left to itself,
it will destroy itself in its own excessive individuation, and
society will be forced back again on the militant phase as
a means of regaining its strength— the one grand feature
of this development. When individual power has been
won, that power must return itself freely to society under
the moral law as a condition of its ultimate retention.
The central life must expand proportionately to that of
its members, must tower up and overshadow the life
of its parts ; or rather must gather up into itself
from its members, and must send freshly forth from itself
to its members, those common currents of health and
strength for the sake of which only does specialization
take place anywhere. The primary dependence is that
of the individual on society; the secondary dependence is
that of society on the individual. Each, in transition, is
instituted narrowly for itself; but each must ultimately
recognize and embrace the other under the law of the
affections. If society halts in its development at any par-
tial attainments, it is soon forced back on some previous
position to do over again its incomplete work.

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. 1 73

We have in hand to show the weakness of the present
industrial stage of society, and the possibility of advancing
beyond it by the spirit of love only, the Gospel of Christ.
The coming of Christ would seem to have been ordered
in time in reference to these successive phases, and to have
occurred at the earliest period in which any new principles
could take root amid the conflicting forces of war and the
unrestrained selfishness of production. The repeated
failures of the past render plain the insufficiency of either
war or industry to build up a nation in permanent pros-
perity. The progress achieved by the race has not been
made in straight lines, but in zig-zags, as lightning forces
its way in the air. Resistance has accumulated in one
path, till farther advance has been impossible ; and there
has been a pause till the movement has been taken up in
some new direction. Men have begun to conclude that a
circumscribed life belongs, from the nature of things, to
nations as to individuals, and that all organic growth is
discontinuous, its genetic transitions being its most favor-
able and striking features. The actual occasion of the
arrest of social growth from time to time in the past has
been the unwillingness of men to advance from the indus-
trial to the spiritual phase. Society has expended its en-
ergies under the industrial type, till this movement has
become self-destructive. Roman power began to perish
within itself before it began to crumble away under ex-
ternal forces. This inner weakness was due to the curd-
ling of social elements under a purely selfish system.
Classes became more widely separated, were more intensely
hostile, and were enervated by wealth on the one side,
and by poverty on the other. Here were the rich men
who fared sumptuously every day, and here the beggars,
full of pollution, who were laid at their doors. Neither

174 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

of them could win manhood for themselves or bring
strength to society.

The conditions of national life have been somewhat
altered by the permanent division of nations, and the
general extension of civilization. There is now no area
left in which barbarous and hostile powers can be nurt-
ured, and no ability in inferior civilization to resist superior
civilization. Exterior pressure is so far reduced by this
fact, or rendered so amenable to public opinion, that the
precise method of overthrow which is liable to overtake
a state weak by decay is less obvious. But this much is
plain, that the simply industrial spirit tends constantly to
deeply divide classes and to weaken social ties, and is,
therefore, hostile to the continuous growth and prosperity
of the state. Arrest and overthrow will follow, whether
we are able or not to anticipate its precise method, or to
point out the successive steps in which internal decay and
external violence will unite in the result. India and China
and Japan have presented examples of a civilization hope-
lessly balked by the poverty of the working-classes. In
European nations the disaster may come as communism,
since communism gains an ever-growing incentive out of
the increasingly unequal rewards of industry. Or, one
nation may engulf another ; as it is plain that a civiliza-
tion which cannot secure common development for its
citizens, or bind them by a sense of justice to the existing
state of things, cannot long impose any sufficient moral
restraint on simple violence. We can not escape the liabil-
ity of an unexpected appeal to force, so long as a full and
fair appeal to good-will has not been made. It is vain to
suppose that the selfishness of the few avIU not, in due
time, and in some inevitable way, be met by the selfishness
and violence of the many. Even within the present cen-

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. 1 75

tury, all portions of Europe have suffered by devastation ;
the most civilized nation playing the part of a barbaric
horde led by an Alaric.

Though the repeated failures of the past have some-
vi^hat the force of inductive proof against continuous
civilization, this conviction would be readily overcome did
we not clearly see that an industrial type, built upon the
desires and so upon the appetites and passions of men, is
within itself full of increasingly repellent forces, which
must ultimately find expression in a disaster of some sort.
The century just finished has contained a complete re-
hearsal of this law on a large scale. Slavery in the United
States, in that century, passed through all the phases of
censure, tolerance, justification, stern maintenance, each
prompted in due order by an industrial sentiment and in-
dustrial incentives. Yet the conditions of a terrible, and,
in spite of all prediction, unexpected retribution were ac-
cumulated in that one century, and broke upon us in such
terrific force that another century will hardly more than
suffice to wear out the penalty. Industry simply — politi-
cal economy without ethics — rests on our selfish impulses,
and in the operation of all its laws, gives power to those
who have power, and so widens the divisions between
men. This it does in its later stages with startling rapidity,
a rapidity so great that the world is not rich enough for a
continuous movement in this direction, any more than it
was large enough for the conquests of Alexander. There
are not sufficient resources of labor in the poor to glut the
appetite for wealth, and the process is arrested by the
sifnple exhaustion of extreme poverty. This industrial
tendency may be softened and delayed by various
measures of good-will, but it contains within itself the
certain promise of catastrophe.

1/6 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

To give to those who have is an important and broad
moral principle, but if we narrow it down into an economic
or social law, as some are willing to do, it plays only a sub-
ordinate and unsafe part. We may begin with it, but we
can not end with it. If we refuse to expand this principle
to its full limits under the divine law of love, and simply
cling to the rule that each man shall hold what natural
forces, expressed under the social facts of free competition,
assign 'him, we shall discover that we are approaching a
final and not very remote bound of individual and of gen-
eral well-being. This result is hidden from thoughtful
minds, first, because they overlook the fact that the affec-
tions are constantly breaking in on the industrial desires,
and soften them when they can not control them ; and,
secondly, because they clearly see the vigorous and need-
ful discipline of natural laws, the many ways in which
society has suffered from hasty and awkward efforts to
escape them, and do not so distinctly discern the lines
along which these lower laws must always, in a truly
spiritual economy, be merged in higher ones. We can not
accept the statements of those who look upon society as
a field of laws, in their nature and severity allied to
physical laws, and who thus anticipate its redemption, so
far as it is capable of redemption, from the continued
pressure of these forces. ''All that we can affirm with
certainty is that social phenomena are subject to law, and
that natural laws of the social order are in their entire
character like the laws of physics." " Every successful
effort to widen the power of man over nature is a real vic-
tory over poverty, vice, and misery, taking things in the
general and in the long run. It would be hard to find a
single instance of a direct assault by positive effort upon
poverty, vice, and misery, which has not either failed, or,

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. 1/7

if it has not failed directly and entirely, has not entailed
other evils greater than the one which it has removed.
The only two things which really tell on the welfare of
man on earth, are hard work and self-denial (/. e., in tech-
nical language, labor and capital), and these tell most
when they are brought to bear directly upon the effort to
earn an honest living, to accumulate capital, to bring up a
family of children to be industrious and self-denying in
their turn." '

This is the gospel of industry, the inspired canon of
Political Economy. The error it contains is not less in
magnitude than the truth it holds. It regards a transient
phase — which must be, if it is to be of any use, a trans-
itional one — as the permanent form of society. It discards
higher forces because they are not at once or fully appli-
cable to lower conditions ; and that too in face of the
most significant facts of our time. No assertion concern-
ing society could well be made more profoundly untrue
and misleading than that every direct assault upon poverty,
vice, and misery has miscarried. We have only to in-
stance the educational institutions of other countries, and
yet more those of our own countiy, to disclose the rash-
ness of the assertion. These institutions almost univer-
sally include, and that usually \x\ a high degree, a moral
and eleemosynary element, and their success has been
more than proportioned to the generous effort they have
involved. There are very few in the United States who
have acquired any considerable education, to say nothing
of a liberal one, who have not been aided therein either
by private or public liberality. One can hardly gain with
us the knowledge which helps to entitle his opinions to

'Sociology, Princeton Review, Nov., i88l.

1/8 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

respect without being compelled, in the censure he may
pass upon benevolent effort, to stand as an illustration of
the opposite principle.

Industry as industry is thoroughly selfish. It involves
a perpetual division of interests, and a desertion of the
poor by the rich so far as their own gains, narrowly
viewed, will allow it. As industry so ordered aims not
so much at any thing that can be termed absolutely well-
being, as at relative superiority in the external circum-
stances of life, poverty and degradation may remain in
entire consistency with its purpose, while ready and
humble service may be a part of it. Every inferior class
gives relief and advantage to every superior one. Superi-
ority is present by contrast, and pliancy is the fruit of
necessity. Industrial laws, natural though they are,
gather power rapidly, in their development, into the hands
of the few, and a power of the most searching, exacting,
and irremediable order. If wealth can be left to an unre-
stricted use of all the conditions of acquisition which easily
and in due succession fall to it ; if poverty is to be left to
the entire weight of the growing disadvantages which
overtake it ; if civil law stands by as an indifferent umpire
in the conflict, simply preserving that peace which is neces-
sary for its progress, then no bondage and no hopelessness
are comparable to that slavery and despair which are
liable to overtake the working classes under a simply in-
dustrial system. We may theoretically afifirm that there
are thus present immense forces of propulsion, developing
industry and economy, but they lack almost wholly that one
element which makes them effective social forces — hopeful-
ness. " In an over-populated country the extremes of
wealth and luxury are presented side by side with the ex-
tremes of poverty and distress. They are equally the prod-

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. 1 79

ucts of natural social pressure. The achievements of
power are highest, the rewards of prudence, energy, enter-
prise, foresight, sagacity, and all other industrial virtues
are greatest ; on the other hand, the penalties of folly,
weakness, error, and vice are most terrible. Pauperism,
prostitution, and crime are the attendants of a state of
society in which science, art, and literature reach the high-
est development." ^

After this vigrorous statement of the evils which attend
on the natural unfolding of an industrial systemx, the
author has no remedy beyond that of an increase of
speed, a still more remorseless application of the very
principles under which the mischief has arisen. Over-
population, in its entire entail of misery, is simply an-
other incentive, pushing men onward into a position
of foresight and broader moral responsibiUty. This
is the only remedy of over-population. The term is
relative, and expresses a life disproportionate to the in-
tellectual, and still more the moral, resources of a nation.
It is simply the crowding of physical forces upon spiritual
powers. Nothing is to be feared from over-population
when the moral impulses have the lead ; in this lead lies
the remedy.

If there is any one truth that has come clearly out in
the history of the race, it is that progress is never secured
by the simple addition of gross motives. Flogging as a
punishment does not improve character. Cruel inflictions
do not redeem society. Wretchedness does not correct
vice. The sufferings of barbarians do not civilize them.
The final and sufficient Incentives must come, like a flock
of doves out of heaven. In gentleness and in beauty.

l80 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

When the intelHgence and strength and virtue of a com-
munity are found forgetful of its ignorance and weakness
and wickedness; when the better classes desert the in-
ferior ones, and attempt to march on alone, the poor, in
their groveUing qualities, will only the more basely betray
themselves ; and the rich, in their selfish ones, will fall off
from true greatness and substantial well-being.

The industrial method thoroughly recognizes self-
interest, — undistinguished from selfishness — and relics on
it as a prevailing prudential incentive. The indulgences
of wealth are as much a part of the programme as the
privations of poverty. The one is the pull and the other
the push of the same movement. If we deny the luxury
we lose the one impulse ; if we alleviate the misery we
lose the other. It is for the sake of these enjoyments
that men exercise their sagacity. A Derby race, with its
five thousand dollars paid to the jockey that rides the
successful horse, is a typical force that moves the world.
A right-hand corner-stone in the social structure is the
luxury of the luxurious ; a left-hand corner-stone is the
wretchedness of the wretched. These, again, are the two
pillars on which our temple rests ; and unfortunately there
is a blind giant of force standing between them, with an
arm wrapped about each ; we can not tell when he will
bow himself and bring our revel to an end. Certainly
these laws of industry, which are of the nature of physical
laws, have no power to assuage grief, call out sympathy,
or placate passion. It has been in this very mill of in-
dustry that our giant has been grinding, till his mind is full
of sullen hate.

This notion of the unchangeabllity of the forces that
rule in any social phase proceeds on a false view of the
moral world. The author referred to regrets that soci-

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. l8l

ology has been included in moral science, and been " con-
fused and entangled by its dogmas." Herein is the bold
assumption that society is not the field of morals, and that
sociology, the science of social forces, should be ordered
without reference to man's moral nature. On the other
hand we venture to think that the chief difficulty in so-
ciety has been and is that its action is ordered without
sufficient reference to morals, and that the correction of
its evils lies in the growth of the moral sentiment. Mor-
ality, as social law, means this much or it means very
little. The only possible organic harmony in a spiritual
universe must arise under the two laws of love ; the only
possible harmon5^in society must appear under the second
of those laws. This statement is hardly less than axiomatic.
Where there is not mutual regard, there is not moral or-
ganization ; there are forces still in conflict, and these
must reduce happiness and impede growth. Moreover, the
affections are constitutionally the very seat and source of
our highest and most enduring pleasures, and we cannot
mar these affections, or put any thing in their place, with-
out corresponding loss. The pure, generous, and hearty
nature is the permanently happy one ; and this is an irre-
versible law in the moral universe. But the industrial
phase of society strives to set aside this law by a law of its
own. The force of gravity may as well contend for ex-
clusive control of the human body as the law of self-inter-
est for the entire government of the human soul. Happi-
ness is annexed and forever annexed to the gracious affec-
tions, and this is a fact that cannot for a moment be
forgotten in a successful sociology. It is profoundly
better, in every way better, to give than to receive ; and
the practical denial of the fact in industrial society shows
the error and bondage still in it.

1 82 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

We do not set aside the industrial regimen ; we cordially
assent to the fact that we must grow through it and by
means of it. No man can be generous till he has won
that which is his own. The mistake is that when he has
won it, he insists that an unscrupulous and selfish con-
sumption of it is the best consumption, the very consump-
tion he has had in view from the beginning, the only in-
centive of his labor. When the mind is in the midway
ground between lower and higher motives, it suffers from
a variety of attractions and illusions. A revel of the pas-
sions, hard labor for the desires, the sweet intercourse of
the affections, all draw it ; and it does not find its true
centre till it approaches the goal. The refinements of so-
ciety are felt to be valuable, and so they are. The indus-
trial temper, when it is brought near enough to the
spiritual temper to feel the need of self-justification in its
forgetful and selfish methods, is likely to set it up in this
wise. Refinements are the staples of civilization, its most
manifest gains ; they must be preserved at all hazards ;
the divisions in society serve to fence them off and fence
them in from that vulgar herd which grazes on the open
common, and which, once admitted, would trample these
plants under foot, without gain to themselves, and to our
infinite loss. Here is an important plea, and the indus-
trial temper makes the most of it.

There is another supplementary truth, which it sees less
clearly. These refinements, while they are in some sense
the products of seclusion, suffer immensely from it.
They are like a garden which has not only been fenced
in, but roofed In, till the sunlight of heaven can not reach
It, and bring forward its plants to flowering and fruitage.
Our satirical writers have discovered this fact ; and we
ourselves have framed words on purpose to express these

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. 1 83

phases of society. The refinements of wealth, when not
sustained by intellectual cultivation, we term shoddy ;
the refinements of cultivated society which are not sus-
tained by good-will, w^e term snobbishness. How searching
and bitter and just is the satire of Thackeray, and against
what is it all directed but the refinements of an industrial
system in its later stages ; refinements that are not
bedded" in the moral life, offer no sufficient pleasures, and
give no inner strength ; refinements that have been roofed
in from the pure light of heaven, and have contracted the
pallor of disease. Even these refinements can not be
long preserved on these narrow conditions. They are
perishable fruits, and must in time decay ; or rather they
are in a state of chronic decay. As the refinements of
wealth must at once be supported by cultivation, so those
of cultivation must be immediately sustained and ex-
tended by good-will. These refinements are in part what
industry gets to give, and forgetting to give them, they
perish on her hands. No miser can ever be blessed by
his gains. It was with a perfect insight Into this inner
weakness of mere luxury, in its ever-returning and futile
efforts, that Christ commanded his disciples : When thou
makest a dinner or supper, call not thy friends nor thy
brethren, neither thy kinsmen nor thy rich neighbors, lest
they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee.
But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed,
the lame, the blind, and thou shalt be blessed, for they
can not recompense thee. He then proceeds to the para-
ble of the great supper, — the true blessing— from which
one and another excuses himself on the ground of this
and that narrow private interest. No one craves a part
in the festivity of love.

It may seem surprising that, in the highest stage of de-

1 84 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

velopment which the industrial type has ever attained,
and among its well-to-do classes, the question is so vigor-
ously put : Is life worth living? and is so often answered
in a pessimistic spirit. Yet it is not strange. Disappoint-
ment is the most depressing feeling. It extinguishes
light, it destroys hope, it tramples out the fire and en-
thusiasm of effort. But the industrial system as it reaches
its goal discerns more and more clearly that the objects
gained are of no new worth, that it has been the victim of
a mirage that leaves its thirst unquenched. Whither shall
it go ? What shall it now do ? Whence is to come a
new promise and a fresh labor? These are questions it
can not answer ; and without an answer life is not worth
living.

Yet the answer is plain, if we freely accept our higher,
spiritual nature. Industry has not miscarried, life is not
ended. So far as there has been an apparent miscarriage,
it has been because we have taken means for ends. If
society were any happier than it is, that happiness, in the
present selfishness of men, would be an accusation against
Heaven, and would obscure the path of progress. As
long as men and women really prefer that play of sensi-
bilities which attends on the possession of diamonds to
that which accompanies an extended exercise of good-
will toward other men and women, the happiness of the
world can not be materially increased ; nor ought it to be.
There is no basis for such increase. Selfishness has run
itself out of breath, and love will not come in to take up
the race. To vary the image, we are landed on a farther
shore, we have reached a new carrying-place; only by
making this neck of land, can we launch our boats on fresh

waters.

But the excuse is ready. Direct assaults on vice and

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. 1 85

misery have lamentably failed. Doubtless they have
in part failed, because they have not been thoroughly
sustained by wisdom and inspired by love. Love that
is careless and heedless is by so much less than
love. Love is not off-hand in its work, it carries with it
the utmost patience and attainable skill. Now skill,
patience, and love have not failed ; on the other hand, all
the social successes of the world are due to them in their
minor and major forms of application. Indeed the latter
forms are of the two less often complete, and so we are
confused and misled by the results. Skill and good-will
more readily run between man and man, than between
class and class ; they pass more perfectly by slight methods
than by great manifestations; but in either case, when
they are present, they do not fail to do their work, and
a great work. As long as we give in the spirit of self-
indulgent wealth, satirized by Horace: " Take these things
home to your children ; if you do not, I shall give them
to the pigs," we have not tested the force of good-will
in the world. Its failures hitherto have been the failures
of incipiency, not those of maturity. What seer, in view
of the facts of history as they pass before him, is afraid to
predict the fortunes of good-will, provided it be good-will
fortifying itself with the appliances of wisdom.

It is plain that men are becoming aware, and more and
more completely so every day, of the present and pros-
pective failure of mere industrialism. Many have already
at hand their remedies in some form of communism or
socialism. That communism is often the search for a truth,
and even the partial expression of a truth, that lies be-
fore us, one may be quite willing to admit ; yet the spirit
and methods of both these " isms " are usually retrogressive.
A communism that has in it any disposition to confisca-

1 86 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

tion, any desire arbitrarily to redlvlde the fruits of past
labor, is in antagonism to the forces which rule industry,
and is seeking to escape existing evils by retreat and not
by advance. Such a movement involves a misunderstand-
ing of the problem. A communism of this order does not
see that the strongest incentives out of which the laws of
production spring, have not been too strong for the Vvork
they have had to do, and that they can only be advan-
tageously and permanently softened by struggling up
through them and not by sinking beneath them. If we
do these laws essential violence by arbitrary redivision, we
shall soon find ourselves in a position in which we shall be
compelled to restore them in full force as a condition of
regaining lost ground. If we can supplement self-interest
with good-will, very well ; but if we propose to expel one
form of self-interest by another form of self-interest much
less justifiable and not less exacting; if we put the self-
interest of the less intelligent classes in place of the self-
interest of the more intelligent, we shall certainly fail, and
be compelled to restore the more primitive and natural
relations of men to each other. Government that is truly
progressive is coherent in its successive steps; still more
are the laws of society coherent in their unfolding, and
any accumulation of pressure indicates an occasion for
progress, not for retreat.

In the present conflict between labor and capital, the
wrong involved in existing circumstances is strongly felt
by the working classes. They understand this much, that
current relations can not be,must not be, accepted as ulti-
mate ; that they are in some way to have a brighter future ;
that toil is to lighten its burdens as it progresses. In the
restlessness begotten by hard labor, and by the just senti-
ment that they too should share the growth of the world,

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. 1 8/

they are ready for any sudden and violent change that
makes promise of being remedial. The proper counsel,
under the circumstances, to workingmen, is not patience
and submission, but wise effort. This counsel must include
a plain path forward along the lines of unfolding that be-
long to our higher nature. The naked enforcement of
laws of sociology, which are only the harsh rendering of
impulses based on self-interest, a self-interest that has
taken sides with the rich against the poor, is fitted only to
enflame and embitter passion. Those who are below can not
be successfully exhorted to lie quiet for the sake of those
that are above, nor will they willingly believe that there
is any satisfactory and just law that holds them in their
place. It is not now true, and will become less and less
true with every advancing year, that society, in its founda-
tions and superstructure, is built simply on self-interest.
It is true, and must remain true, that without first sustain-
ing the laws of self-interest, we can not reach those of be-
nevolence. But having established production, we must
make It minister more and more to good-will, a good-will
that constantly softens the conditions of production itself.
We can not supersede justice by benevolence, we may
greatly modify it by benevolence.

A true communistic movement must be rooted in the
concessions of good-will, must spring freely up under the
laws of our higher nature, those very laws that make these
progressive unfoldings expressions of profound truths, chief
among which is. It is more blessed to give than to receive.
In the measure in which the individual understands that
the community is after all the grand reservoir of personal
powers in the physical, the intellectual, and the moral
world ; that personal well-being can be gotten in no other
way so fully, so fortunately, and of so high an order, as by

1 88 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

a free and constant contribution to the common life, will
uninterrupted progress be possible in those later stages in
which it enters the true moral domain.

For more than two thousand years it has been distinctly
seen — and it is a truth that in the meantime has found
many practical enforcements — that in all free or proxi-
mately free governments, the great struggle lies between
the rich and the poor. So to reconcile and organize these
two extremes that the inner forces of society shall be
attractive and not divisive, organic and not destructive, is
the great problem of social life.

Liberty and democracy, said Aristotle, can not exist
without equality of conditions. Equality before the
law that issues in gross social inequalities ceases to
have the force and even the appearance of a great prin-
ciple. This social and civil conflict between the rich and
the poor is one that is coming, with each advancing year,
to touch us as a nation more nearly, and to hold in itself
more manifestly the future of the republic. Society and
civil law can not long be divided in their temper. If the
possession of wealth defines social relations and social
power, it must come in time to govern civil ones also.
The greater contains the less.

Some have thought that the true remedy for this con-
flict is a return in the tenure of land to the primitive
method of common ownership, with yearly division.
This view overlooks many things. It overlooks the fact
that states and societies do not move backward. Growth
does not return to previous conditions. The forces of
individuation have been sufficient, in most instances, to
overthrow this tenure ; much more will they be sufficient
to prevent its re-establishment. This opinion does not
sufficiently consider the fact that a common tenure of

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. 1 89

land is applicable to an agricultural population only, and
to one relatively stationary in civilization and in numbers ;
while the great evils of modern society chiefly develop
themselves in cities, and cities are gaining increased social
weight as contrasted with rural districts. This view also
forgets that modern civilization can afford neither to
spare, nor to materially reduce, that personal energy and
enterprise, that increased life, which have accompanied
individuation. There is no general principle which will
justify regression at this essential point. The true solu-
tion of the social problem is a husbandry of these awak-
ened powers and a subjection of them to the general
well-being. Their repression would be a pitiable confes-
sion of weakness. Progress must quicken personal
activity and extend personal responsibility, checking
them only at the line at which they begin to trespass on
the action of others, and so to undermine themselves.

Those who look backward rather than forward for the
remedy in this conflict fail also to see the anomalous
moral attitude in which they are ready to place society.
Rarely will one tie his own hands lest he should commit
a crime, or fill his ears with wax lest he should hear the
Syren of temptation. Still less will society do this. Men
will not peacefully lay aside great and valuable powers
lest they should abuse them ; nor will society as a whole
enter on such a method. The moral strength sufficient to
lead to such a measure ought to lead, and would lead, to
something far better than it.

Moreover, counsels of this extreme order are wasted.
Society will accept no heroic treatment, will yield itself
to no man's panacea ; its stages of growth will not be
the long strides of theory, but the short, tentative steps
of experience. It is of comparatively little use to con-

jgO THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

struct complicated theories, or theories which involve
extensive changes, for the reorganization of society.
Society will hardly give them so much as a hearing; and
the boldness, the rashness of the spirit which would lead
to their adoption would augur poorly for their mainten-
ance.

Society will, doubtless, in reaction against excessive in-
dividuation— an individuation that tends to anarchy — and
pressed by urgent dangers, learn both in theory and in prac-
tice to assert more vigorously its own superior rights. It
may set limits to individual acquisition, especially in landed
property ; it may restrict the amounts which it will pass
from the dead to the living in inheritance, — a measure
that would rapidly reduce excessive wealth ; it may com-
pel wealth to bear its full arithmetical proportion of the
public burdens^ — which it now so generally and so exten-
sively evades — or a geometrical proportion, which would
serve to compensate the extravagant power of accumu-
lation which falls to great possessions. The right of
society in this direction will be recognized in connection
with the circumstances which call for its use. He who
holds millions and transmits millions almost without
effort ; he who easily and safely gathers into his own
hands the best opportunities of a great commercial com-
munity, is able to do so by virtue of that pervasive
presence of civil law which the state maintains. It is for
this same state, as a wise and just presence, to decide in
what method, to what extent, and at what price, guided
by the public weal, it will cast this protection over in-
dividual wealth ; how far it will aid the individual in
gathering in the conditions of advantage which it itself
confers. The incentives to effort which society needs
carefully to guard are chiefly found in connection with

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. I91

poverty and with moderate wealth ; they exist in excess
rather than in deficiency in connection with extreme
wealth.

One thing is plain, a happy, social organization will be
a free and a highly moral one. The pressure of present
dangers are the very incentives which are to bear us for-
ward through the next stages of progress, lifting our
moral level. No perfect organization is consistent with
selfishness, or can be the product of selfishness. Society
must be organized within itself by the possession of a
liberal and beneficent spirit, the spirit of Christ, and by
giving this spirit constructive force as rapidly as it is
gained. Only thus can we escape one phase or another of
conflict. Most true is the assertion of Immanuel H. Fichte,
that Christianity is " destined some day to become the in-
ner organizing power of the state." The social spirit and
civil law will grow together, and together struggle against
the spirit of division and anarchy, and win their victory
only by a slow infusion of the mind of Christ.

But these transitions are already incipient, and the
forces that are to make them complete are in action.
Hence the question of social progress is not one of general
principles simply, but one of specific applications also.
General and extended education at the cost of society has
probably been thus far the most effective social agency in
growth, and is one which still admits of a far more perfect
and complete use. Knowledge is a primary condition of
skilful and successful action ; and if it be true knowledge,
it supplies also the most immediate incentives to such ac-
tion. No one who believes in the steady and general devel-
opment of human life, will expect this result without
knowledge. One of the most direct and certain ways in
which society can use its strength for its conjoint interests

192 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

is education, improved in quality and increased in quan-
tity. Any effort that reaches any mind as knowledge,
attains that which in itself is good, and can only be turned
into evil by perversion. The more extended the knowl-
edge the less become the motives for its abuse. It is
urged against education that it is often not well adapted
to the particular and immediate ends of life. Quite true ;
and the remedy lies in a more careful adaptation. Or it
is said, that knowledge does not necessarily improve char-
acter ; that character is a thing of incentives and habits.
If this be affirmed of some forms of knowledge, it is true ;
but it is not true of knowledge widely or wisely taught.
This gives us the range alike of physical, intellectual,
social, and spiritual law^s. The motives and methods of
virtue are also themselves proper subjects of that large
discipline which is covered by education. Occasionally it
has been said that there are more convictions for crime in
well-educated than in ignorant communities. It is pos-
sible ; where there is no law there is no transgression.
All the reasons urged against education betray their origin
in indifference, by the simple fact that no good mxan thinks
them applicable in the case of his own children.

While the essential forces and laws of industry are not
to be set aside, they can be constantly softened and re-
shaped for ends of equalization. The increasing power
which wealth acquires by the very growth of society, the
excessive stimulus which it occasions on the one side, and
the bitter repression on the other, can only be corrected
by social sentiment and civil law. Social laws are not in-
flexible, neither is all legislation in modification of them
mischievous. The very injury ascribed to these measures
must arise from a modification effected by them in social
action. The true statement is that great caution and wis-

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. 1 93

dom are called for when we deal with primitive social ten-
dencies, that our new methods may lie in the general
direction of their social action, and be in continuation of
it. Social laws are modifiable, and are suffering constant
modification in the progress of society. This fact arises
from their very nature. They rest on motives, incentives
in the human mind, and these incentives are variable un-
der social progress. Action and growth change the data
from which the laws spring, and so change the laws them-
selves. These changes may be made successfully of set
purpose, as well as by insensible transformations.

The conditions under which real estate is to be held are
wholly within the scope of law. They may be altered
again and again in the further equalization of incentives
and opportunities. The pull and the push in society, the
rewards of labor and the losses of indolence, need constant
rearrangement as they gather too intensely at poles too
remote from each other. Otherwise the advancing host
has no common spirit ; all is eagerness in the front, all is
indifference in the rear, and an unscrupulous sentiment is
everywhere. The excessive pull of wealth and the in-
effectual push of poverty land men alike in vice. Educa-
tion can not do much unless social sentiment and civil law
keep the highways of individual progress clear, by a con-
stant reduction on the one side, and restitution on the
other, of incentives. That tenure and division and trans-
fer of real estate are best which, the circumstances being
given, confer the strongest and most general motives of
industry. Between strength and generality, generality is
to receive the first attention.

Monopolies of every form, whether legal or natural or
incidental to the simple growth of industry, are to be re-
moved or softened, according to the principles involved

194 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

under the general end of the general well-being. In short,
society is to have a brain and a heart, with which to watch
over its own growth, remembering, in the spirit of Christ,
that it has but one interest, one life, one redemption ;
that the weak are committed to the strong, the ignorant
to the wise, under the law of love.

That the state can do this, and has been doing it in a
limited way in the progress already achieved, are very
plain. Public education is an example ; the use of public in-
stitutions as depositories of the savings of the poor is an
example ; national banks in the security they have brought
to industry are examples ; the many charities of the state
and its milder penal administration are examples still
waiting completion. Though these have not been ad-
ministered with that uniform wisdom which would make
them entirely satisfactory instances of what society can do
for itself, they are none the less among the best illustrations
of progress. A reactionary spirit — reactionary against
the tyranny of the past — has of late years striven to cut
down the state to its lowest possible terms of protection,
and to cast discredit on every positive effort on the part of
the state to render direct aid to its citizens. The com-
bined action of men In the state expresses an Immense
power. When society Is sufficiently advanced to use this
power for its own advantage, nothing can, or should, pre-
vent its use. The plea against it Is Individual liberty,
but this is also the plea for it. Joint liberty or power
wisely used will resolve itself at once into an Increase of
individual liberty or power. There Is no ultimate antago-
nism between the state and the Individual, between joint
power and single power, but the possibility rather of com-
bining them In the highest harmony. They are reciprocal,
they minister to each other, they depend on each other.

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. I95

To sacrifice one is to sacrifice the other ; the discord is
ill-advised and transient, the concord well-advised and per-
manent. The state in the progress of society will do more
than it now does, not less, for its citizens, simply because
it is the seat of great reserved power, a power wdiich helps
the power of individuals. When that power becomes
subject to a wise and humane sentiment it can not with-
hold itself, it can not be withheld, from a humane work.
The opposite view springs from the bad blood that is
found in the relations of man to man, and man to society,
is found in conditions of vice and not of virtue. As vice
disappears, powers will coalesce and harmonize ; the indi-
vidual will find his strength in and by society, and society
its strength in and by the individual. This is organiza-
tion, and nothing short of it is organization. The state
may thus take to itself any interests that are either burdened
with too great labors or attended with too great gains to
be left to the individual. The state in what it does, in
what it gives and takes, will stand for all its citizens. This
is the direction of actual growth, and this is the spirit of
Christ.

There is, however, an organic force far more pervasive
and effective than that of the state, one of which the state
is only a partial expression, social sentiment. When so-
cial sentiment is infused with moral life and moral love, a
life and a love as broad and inclusive as its own body,
it will begin to take care of its own members in a tender
and effective way. Toward this we are steadily advan-
cing, and this means the love of our neighbor as ourselves.
In this path Christ is before us. He, in word, example,
and revelation, is the way, the truth and the life. Men
speak as if there were a kind of salvation in the mere din of
industrial wheels, and pressure of industrial forces. This is

196 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

such a salvation as we find in China and Japan. More
pressure of this order is like that of steam ; it tends only
to explosion. As a tempered force in an engine, with a
perpetual vent in the open air, steam may drag its load
onward with immense power. The moral realm of hope
and life is the open air into which industry must perpetu-
ally discharge its pent up energies as a condition of prog-
ress. This air of heaven Christ discloses to us. All the
struggling forces of ignorance, vice, selfishness, and misery
are worth nothing as propelling powers, without this free
realm of hope above them.

The feeling of the need of unity is the one great im-
pulse which lies at the basis of all great movements in
society, true or false. It builds empires, and weaves
together the comrnerce of the world. Missing its aim, in
the chagrin of failure, it would take all to pieces again, and
reconstruct the parts as republicanism or communism or
socialism.

The Church has had this feeling, and that too when it
has been least able to meet this innate desire for unity.
It has termed itself the Universal Church, the Historical
Church, the Apostolic Church, the Holy CathoHc Church.
When men have lost faith in Christ, they have not lost
the vision of unity. Lessing dreamed that it might be
won by a kind of free-masonry ; Comte set up in its be-
half a worship of humanity ; Frederic Harrison accepts
the synthesis of humanity as an absorbing passion and
hope. The only path to this spiritual goal is the one in
which Christ walks before us.

Why then, has not the Christian Church attained this
end ? We reason hastily concerning the failures of reHg-
ion, as if religion in the abstract were chargeable with
them, and not we ourselves, who have interpreted and

GROWTH OF SOCIETY HISTORICALLY. 1 97

applied it. It is not the essential and incipient impulses
of religion that are at fault, but the limitations and re-
tardations that have been put upon them. Science is not
the errors of scientific men, nor philosophy the mistakes
of philosophers, nor civil liberty the aberrations of free
states ; no more is religion the credulities and misdeeds of
faith. Every great truth or system of truths struggles
with the conditions of its birth, and comes but slowly into
possession of its own life. The end can not be the be-
ginning, and preeminently, when the aim is so inclusive as
to call for repeated reconstruction under a protracted
series of actions and reactions.

Periods of belief are naturally succeeded by periods of un-
belief, which arise in correction of the too narrow formula
and too fixed methods of belief. Religion is the heir of
all, and profits by all. In saying this we are not to con-
found the perfection of the end with the awkwardness and
defect of the intervening means. The means do not, in
their particular form, derive their character from the end,
but from the obdurate and untoward circumstances about
them. Chaos and creation are separated by every stage of
inchoate production. Religion in its dogmas and institu-
tions is never fully itself. Its creeds suffer all the narrow-
ness of ignorance, and its institutions are shaped to tran-
sient and more or less unfortunate circumstances. To
hold fast by a doctrine, to adhere to a rite, to rally to an
organization, is to accept the husk of the seed, often with
the loss of the seed itself.

We can distinctly affirm from the very nature of the
problem that men can not advance collectively and indi-
vidually, save by the principles and methods brought fully
to light in Christ ; we can as distinctly affirm that men
have advanced in the past centuries, and are advancing in

198 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

the present century, by a partial and hesitating application
of these very principles. It is, therefore, both a fact of
philosophy and of experience, that Christ is the way and
the truth and the life.

The ultimate coalescence and harmony of all elements
of growth must be found in a community permeated
through and through with these same spiritual principles
which find their only complete expression in the life and
teachings of Christ. All religious, all moral agencies
expend themselves on, and are treasured in, social senti-
ment. This is the pervasive protoplasm of general and of
individual life. Into this the truth of all beliefs, the
virtue of all faiths, the piety of all churches must pass.
From this come the constructive and beneficent forces of
the state, and largely the impulses which govern each
individual within the state. This is the vital atmosphere
which sustains the daily respiration of spiritual life ; and
the oxygen of this air must be and will be the words of
Christ, as expounded by the spirit of Christ. They assert
this relation and this office for themselves by their
intrinsic character, by their present hold on the hearts
and actions of men, and by their power to push their way
among all races and all generations of the human house-
hold. If these principles are not the root of salvation,
then salvation is not yet in the world, nor is it yet an
intelligible hope.

CHAPTER X.
The Natural and the Supernatural.

The intellectual clearness and the moral warmth of the
words of Christ, which make them the light of the world,
would be more readily discerned and cordially accepted
by some minds were it not for the supernatural events
with which they are associated. These have occasioned in
them a cautious and sceptical temper, which has served to
dim the personality of Christ with doubts and suspicions
that would not otherwise have arisen. While they may
fully acknowledge the excellency of his teachings, they
regard his life as a medley of contradictions, and so lose
that pure personal presence from which alone this wisdom
and grace can properly proceed.

In consistency with our plan, we enter into no details ;
we find no occasion to defend either this or that miracle ;
we wish only to show that the overshadowing force of the
supernatural which is in the words of Christ, and in the
narrative of the events which accompanied them, is not
present in abatement of their power, but as a thoroughly
harmonious and fitting accompaniment of it. We regard
these supernatural events as threads of gold in the fabric
of truth, and we do not understand how they can be
drawn without destroying the firmness and marring the
beauty of the texture. We see, or think we see, that
the peculiar lustre of the perfect work is due in no small
part to these same assertions and implications of a Hfe

199

200 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

inwrought in many ways and in new ways with divine
power.

We are as hearty and unreserved in the iicceptance of
the supernatural as others are in its rejection. Some
think that if the Hfe of Christ could be wholly freed from
the supernatural, his teachings would immediately gain
greatly increased force. " The miracle in the sense of the
thorough-going and consistent supernaturalist, the only
miracle that can prove a revelation supernatural, is, we are
obliged to say, impossible." These multiplied impos-
sibilities of the Gospels thus put a heavy burden on the
sober truths that travel with them.

We, on the other hand, feel as distinctly that if Christ
had separated himself from the supernatural, and striven
to build up the faith of his disciples on the natural alone,
he would have betrayed hopeless weakness, and his words
would have gained little or no hold on the spiritual world.
While we do not think that the miraculous element in the
life of Christ is any essential part of its intrinsic power,
we do regard it as a natural, inevitable incident of that
power, and one of its methods of disclosure ; we do re-
gard it as that which his life could not have lacked with-
out being crippled, as that which his teachings must have
laid hold of and held in some form in order to reach the
high, free, and supernatural nature of man. Christ did
stand where every great teacher of morals must stand, at
the point of union between the natural and the super-
natural, appealing freely to both, a master of both. Re-
ligion without the supernatural in some form is not
religion. Religion everywhere and in every way must as-
sume the supernatural. The two ideas are inextricably
interwoven. Religion pertains to our relation to the divine,
and the divine is supernatural. To expel the supernatural

THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 201

is to expel the divine. Tliis connection is not a weakness of
religion, something to be deprecated by its servants ; it is
its own peculiar power. If Christ had not stood at this very
centre of vision, with the brilliancy of the supernatural
full upon him, he w^ould have gained slight possession of
the minds or hearts of men. Virtue is as sympathetic
with the supernatural as is the diamond with light. It
can not reveal itself as virtue save in this pure atmosphere.
The difficulty at this point seems to arise from the con-
fusion and partial paralysis that have overtaken our intel-
lectual and critical vision. While we have no desire to
insist on the need of any one miracle, we do believe that
the supernatural, for which miracles stand, is the ineffable
element in which all holy life revels ; and this too in full
harmony with the natural, and in most peaceful and
permanent submission to it. The two as fully and as
easily supplement each other as do the body and the
spirit in man.

The great gain of supernaturalism is not the miracle,
but the entirely different view which the miracle may
lead us to take of daily events. Nature ceases to be pur-
poseless, passionless, impersonal, and throbs in every part
with divine thought and feehng. It is this which makes
it an immediate inspiration, a divine presence, the con-
stant revelation of God. It is this conception, in which
nature correlates with mind, that we wish to attain, and
with this conception the supernatural is in eternal har-
mony. The natural without the supernatural is the body
of a friend, bereft of the spirit, cold, motionless, infinitely
removed.

By the natural we understand all those things which
have received a nature absolutely fixed in its terms and
relations. This nature expresses itself in properties —

202 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

settled forms of action — and in movements. No matter
what the quaHties or what the changes through which any-
constituent in nature, as water, may pass, the circuit is a
closed circuit, a defined orbit ; and the elements involved, in
definite amount, are somewhere to be found in it every mo-
ment. The physical world in its entire relations may thus be
likened to the solar system, whose internal dependencies
are constantly altered, but whose bulk of being, balance
of forces, and continuity of movement are forever main-
tained. The ordinary expression for this great fact of
nature — of the natural world — is the perpetuity of matter
and energy. Fixedness, even quite beyond our knowledge,
is the one thing insisted on, and that too under ever-
changing appearances. Forms are infinitely variable, but
between these forms there remains the same relation of
equality, when rightly contemplated, as between the shift-
ing terms of an equation deftly handled. It follows from
this view that within the circuit of the material world all
events, in their character and in their order of sequence,
are defined, and these definitions are what we mean by
physical laws. That this is one term of the universe we
are all agreed.

By the supernatural we understand, as the word implies,
energies or powers which are lifted above the plane of
forces expressed in matter ; which constitute no part of
these forces, and are not subject to their laws, except so
far as the higher agents work with the lower instruments.
These powers are those of reason. They do not exist in
definite quantity, nor do they act in closed circuits, nor
do their movements follow each other under fixed laws —
that is, laws which admit no variety in results. In all these
respects the powers of reason are supernatural ; they have
not a final nature given them, foreclosing all issues. By

THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 203

their own activity they can apprehend, and in a measure
direct, the physical forces that lie beneath them. Thus
below and above, natural and supernatural, become words
figuratively applicable to matter and to mind.

This firm coherence of things, to which time brings
changes, but no new terms and no new directions ; this
spontaneity of reason, which occupies time with its own
growing purposes, we would make the essential character-
istics of the natural and of the supernatural. The two
are known as the physical and the spiritual worlds. The
only possibility of confusion here is in regarding the
action of the human mind within itself and in matter as
natural, because there is a fixed term and limit present in
this action in the human body, itself material and subject
to material laws. We have here the mystery of inter-
action, but this mystery does not alter the endowments
respectively of matter and of mind, the two terms in the
interaction. That a uniform and w^ell-known provision is
made in the body of man for this intercommunication!
does not make the nature of mind natural, in the sense of
allying it to physical forces. It makes it natural in this
sense only, that nature, as a comprehensive term, may be
used to include both mind and matter, and the conditions
of their relation. This comprehensive use, however, ought
not to confuse the mind, nor be made the means of hiding
fundamental differences. The use which is pertinent to-
this discussion is one by which the necessary is separated
from the free, the closed circuit from the open circuit, the
action without comprehension from the one with it ; the
movement which marks forces in transition from that
which expresses incipient powers. This is a distinction so
basal that the world can not be understood without it ; it
is the proper boundary line between the natural and the

204 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

supernatural. In a most significant sense human life is
full of the supernatural, and stands on equal terms with it
and the natural. All other distinctions in forces and
powers are quite secondary to this distinction.

The formal conditions of these two classes of actions
are quite distinct. One set of events occurs in space, the
other in consciousness. Forces and powers are incom-
mensurate with each other. Forces have definite locality,
and admit of definite measurement in foot-pounds.
Powers are without locality, and allov/ of no estimate in
terms of force. Forces are in no way cognizant of their
own action ; powers carry with them a spiritual presence
conscious of their putting forth, and so may be guided by
it. The laws of the two are wholly distinct. The one
set is physical and causal, the other intellectual and free.
This diversity of law marks a corresponding diversity of
character.

A large part of the difficulty which attends on this dis-
cussion arises just here. The mind is struck, as well it
may be, with the idea of law. The supernatural, as often
conceived, is regarded as lawless, and so is thought to
exist in limitation or overthrow of reason. This would
be true were not the supernatural under law of its own
higher order. Physical laws are not exhaustive of law or
of reason ; they do not even attain to the highest type of
either. A miracle that modifies the action of physical
forces may as much arise under a higher spiritual law, as
does the virtuous action of man when he accompHshes a
beneficent purpose through the ministration of nature.
It is forgotten that law is of many orders, related within
themselves by a supreme reason. Nothing is irrational in
law which submits law to reason ; every thing is irra-
tional in law which asserts law against reason. Reason is
ultimate, not law.

THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 205

But it will at once be said the miracle stands on a dif-
ferent footing from the supernatural, even if Ave accept the
supernatural as now defined. This is true formally, but
not substantially. The benevolent labor may be said to
be man's supernatural action, and the miracle God's super-
natural action. When the variable element finds its way
among fixed physical elements by the presence of man,
we are able to recognize the conditions under which this
takes place ; when it finds Its way thither by the inter-
vention of God, we are not able to discern any special
media, nor have we any right to assume their existence.
But what does this signify more than saying that God can
work his purposes immediately in matter, and Is not
bound to a medium like man. Every act of God is In Its
ultimate nature miraculous, one as much so as another.
To make law and to modify law, to create and to recreate,
imply precisely the same power. The miraculous act Is
Intensely like the natural act, lying In the same field, and
implying the same range of government.

Here is no conflict in reason, and no ground for distinc-
tion, between the miraculous and the supernatural, but the
reverse rather. The miracle is rationally an event of the
same order as the virtuous action ; the difference between
them is one only of the Inevitable relations of the two
agents, God and man, the Infinite and the finite, to nature.
That the two interactions stand connected In a different
way with human experience is plain ; but we are not of
the number of those who expect to find the comprehend-
ing Ideas of experience in experience Itself, as a sense-
product. We quite understand that from beginning to
end we reach the Invisible by forsaking the visible, by
making It a grand point of departure for an Inference
which the mind alone can justify. We have not yet

206 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

reached the folly of setting up a ladder as a means of
climbing to heaven.

But is there not an intrinsic irrationality in a miracle
viewed as the act of God ? Quite the reverse. The forces
which in their complex circuits and beautiful rhythm make
up the physical world are an immediate, definite, and
ever-renewed expression of the action of God toward a
limited end. This is one form and a grand form of action
by which God discloses himself to us, making paths before
our feet in which we can walk. But there is no reason
why this method should be the only method. It is a
piece of arbitrariness to assume that this Is the only method,
and must be the only one of work and of revelation, rea-
son admitting of no other. Plainly it does admit of
another. God declares himself to every human soul
through every other human soul. The attributes of God
are especially disclosed in those of men. The good
men are the hght of the world, are the sons of God.
By so much as they are above nature do they lengthen
our vision toward God. But this revelation may go
farther without In any way altering its essential character,
or losing its rational features, and that step is a miracle.
The miracle is a flash of light in the darkness ; it is the
perfect transparency of the natural before the supernatural
at a single point ; it is a moral agency asserting itself in
the height of moral activity ; it is the heart of God making
direct answer to the heart of man. Surely this is not
irrational, nor need we stop to give the plain reasons why
the miracle may not often recur. We can see that the
reasons why it may not recur are only the counterpart of
thosewhy it may occur. It is the old story of aid between
parent and child.

Religion lies, all of it, in this very region of the super-

THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 20/

natural. Hope, faith, prayer, persuasion, are all here.
The natural covers the supernatural, as the glinting sur-
face hides the stream from our senses. But the supernat-
ural is every moment implied in the natural. A Christ
that did not come forth from God would be no Christ.
We should have only one more bewildering reflection from
the mere face of things ; one more mirror-view of our-
selves. What man needs is a natural presentation, yet
one that brings with it every instant a sense of the super-
natural, of the Divine Presence that moves behind the
world and stirs our hopes. The natural is in accommo-
dation to the limited scope of our powers, the supernat-
ural to their profound reach. The natural is the atmos-
phere that softens and diffuses the sun's too intense light.
In a revelation of this order, a miracle which discloses for
an instant the scope of divine grace is the highest appeal
to our spiritual nature. Miracles are but phosphorescent
points on the great ocean of spiritual being about us. The
fundamental truth is the perpetual parallelism of the nat-
ural and the supernatural ; while human life is developed
between these two planes of activity. The quiet compla-
cency with which men deny the supernatural shows how
completely nature has run away in their thoughts both
with God and man. They find no more footing for their
own action than they do for that of God. This very
denial is a disclosure of the need of the miracle.

Man has fallen into the cold shadow of the natural, as
one dwelling at the base of a snow-clad mountain may be
hidden from the morning sun. The thoughtful mind,
profoundly impressed with the magnitude, stability, and
duration of the physical universe, may find no admission
for other truths. Men have come but slowly to this im-
pression, and it is not strange that it should for a time

208 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

overpower them, and be attended with an intellectual
paralysis. The difficulty is not so much that the estimate
of the natural is excessive, as that the mind has not yet
found within itself the proper counterpoise.

Understanding by the natural the entire circuit of phys-
ical things, we have one word — force — wherewith to ex-
press physical action, thing upon thing, thing with thing.
That which is meant by force is supersensual, a substra-
tum of energy which sustains qualities, interactions,
changes, and makes them more than mere illusions. Force
is a general word, and covers an immense variety of forces ;
or at least stands for that substantial existence which sus-
tains an immense variety of manifestations. Physical
things are a congeries of forces expressed in physical
qualities, while physical laws are the modes of change in
physical things. The one is a more statical, the other a
more dynamical, expression of the same groups of forces.
Yet nothing is statical. Qualities are interactions between
things, — interactions which involve less change ; and laws
are interactions which involve more change. Qualities, as
those of a rock, express themselves to the senses of men
under the conditions to which it is subjected — under di-
verse degrees of light and different degrees of heat, under
pressure, under the hammer, under the hand, under acids.
If the change is manifest, the order of change we express
as a law ; if it is slight, we regard the manifestation as one
of qualities. By forces we mean nothing more than the
substantial energies which qualities and changes of quali-
ties equally imply. The groups of forces which express
qualities we know as matter ; while the secondary energies
involved with them, which occasion changes, more espe-
cially change in place and form, w^e designate as forces
or energies. It is not possible to separate the two in fact,
nor distinctly in thought.

THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 20g

These forces Involve each other in endless complexity,
express themselves only in reference to each other, and
are in constant yet changing circuits of interplay with
each other. When we contemplate the physical world,
rendered to the understanding in these its underlying
forces, it offers itself as an eternal flux, the most fixed
qualities being liable to give w^ay to others. The ocean
may seem quiet to the eye ; yet every drop in it is
penetrated with forces that are seeking in vain for
equilibrium. Heat and cold are every instant modifying
these energies; evaporation and rain and wind are at
work on them ; great currents and lesser currents, ebbs
and tides, waves and wavelets are struggling w^ith them ;
animal life and human life are at sport with them ; earth-
quakes, upheavals, and subsidences are adding to and sub-
tracting titanic forces from them, so that equilibrium is
something that is to be but never is present with them.
The fixedness of the physical world on which the minds
of men are dwelling is found after all in relatively slow
circuits of change, characterized by a few settled terms.
Like qualities return under Hke conditions, and with like
interactions come like laws of change ; yet every change
modifies permanently the grounds of change. Thus
again the world is like a solar system, made up of innu-
merable bodies. The closed circuit of each planet and
satellite places these bodies under proximately regular
conditions in their primary relations, though each mass
changes within itself, though the system as a whole
is never twice alike, nor is one of its members subjected
a second time to exactly the same attractions.

The world expresses its fixedness in three particulars :
in the amounts and qualities of elements, in the laws
of their interaction, and in the correlation of energies.

210 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

This fixedness, which is included in the law of causation,
and is also a truth of experience, gives to us the range of
what is known as nature. Realized forces are present
in fixed circuits of interaction. This fact we express
to ourselves under the terminology of natural laws.
Nature stands with us for the unchangeable and inevi-
table, and is so within itself. What part does a term like
this play in our rational lives ? Certainly it does not
in any way take the place of mind. Thoughts make
these fixed material facts an object of contemplation ; they
can in no way constitute a part of them, or be subject to
them. Forces that have but one line of unfolding and
one circuit of results, no matter how complicated these
results are ; forces that are always present in some transi-
tional stage in their effects, no matter what these effects
are, can not be the basis of thought. Thought may reach
this or that conclusion, may stop at this point or push
on to another, may be correct or incorrect, carrying with
it always the possibility of error. Thought is the action
of an agent, not the product of a force. Regarded as an
effect among physical effects, it has no significance ; we
do not know why a force should produce a thought, as a
thought has no known physical form ; or if a force does
produce a thought, we do not know why that thought
should have any correspondence to the events to which it
may seem to pertain. We can give no reason why forces
should occasion in the minds of men — if so be that men
are men and have minds — the images of other forces.
Nor if thoughts are so produced, can we regard them
as either correct or incorrect. They are themselves facts,
and facts that have sufficient causes, indeed the only
facts that can exist under the circumstances. Nor again
can these facts of thought, springing out of previous facts

THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 211

and swallowed up In subsequent ones, in any way modify
the flow of events, or at all discharge the offices of
mind.

Material qualities, material forces, material laws can
subserve no purpose and play no part, till mind is present
to conceive a purpose and supply a part. All thinking
about things implies an agent, who, himself outside of
things, can form ideas concerning them, and frame these
ideas into conclusions and actions. Herein is a distinct
activity and a distinct law. Under the image involved in
the word, this agent is supernatural, one that rises above
the stream of events, and makes them an object of inquiry.
The processes of reflection to which this supernatural
agent subjects nature, are carried forward by other laws
than those of forces — to wit, the laws of logic. These
laws, unlike those of forces, are not necessarily obeyed,
are not so hidden in the very action of the agent as to
find immediate fulfilment at every step of progress.
These laws are found in the relations of thought ; while
the thinking agent discerns them and obeys them with
varying success.

The phenomena of mind are so diverse from those of
matter, that the two can never be expressed in the same
terms ; they can explain each other only in that perma-
nent contrast by which they stand forever separate from
each other, and deepen the impression each of the other.
On this side we have invariable forces, on that variable
powers ; on the one hand we have things, on the other
thoughts; here is certain development, there uncertain
progress ; here necessity, there spontaneity ; in this direc-
tion lie events, in that direction truths ; in this field facts
succeed facts in unending accuracy, in that field error fol-
lows error in unending variety, with a slow deposit of
sound conclusions.

212 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

All inquiry, all reasoning from the facts gained by-
inquiry, all action under the conclusions of reasoning, in-
volve this new agency and these new laws of effort. Deny
these, and not only does mind become unintelligible, mat-
ter becomes so also. We know the one only in contrast
with and in relation to the other. An endless, all-embra-
cing continuity of forces can not be known in itself or by
itself. It itself has not the power of knowledge, and if
this power were granted to it, it must be lost again ; as
we lose a sensation by simple prolongation. It is fitting
that mind, to which alone belongs knowledge, should be
termed supernatural, in contrast with that fixed physical
nature which lies below it for study, comprehension, use.
But the question is not one of words. Whether in lan-
guage we put the spirit of man in nature or above nature,
its functions and actions are those of spontaneity and gov-
ernment, and so foreshadow those of the Divine mind.
The only difference which lies between the two, an act of
creation and an act of guidance ; a miraculous act and a
free act, is in the manner in which they are accomplished,
and not in their inherent rational force, nor in their rela-
tion to nature. This difference of manner is plainly inci-
dent to the finite nature of man on the one side, and the
infinite nature of God on the other. Man is united by a
definite mechanism to the physical world as a world be-
yond him, and only partially submitted to his control ;
while God is omnipresent in nature and is its immediate
source.

We are now prepared, setting the natural over against
the supernatural, the material world over against the
spiritual world, in a measure to comprehend both ; to give
nature a purpose, and assign it a part. Nor need we hesi-
tate to talk about purposes and parts. All knowledge, all

THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 213

science, all philosophy, all religion are made up by means
of these ideas ; the only difference between them lies in
the boldness and scope with which these different forms
of thought discuss these relations of thought, and spread
them abroad over the Universe. One walks with a candle
and inquires into narrow relations, another walks by sun-
light and contemplates the broadest relations ; but all
alike are busy with relations of this one order — those by
which mind unites things in mutual ministration to some
common construction. There are no other significant re-
lations but those of mind. Causes which tend to no con-
struction are chaotic, have no interest for us ; while
construction is construction only by virtue of an end.
We may deny the end if we will, but we tacitly assume it
again in every word we utter concerning means and
relations.

The material world is a third term between us and God,
between man and man ; is a language wherein thought is
recorded and whence thought is taken ; is a work-shop of
forms and of material, where reason sees the work of
reason^ and can itself assay that work. Nature, to sub-
serve this purpose, must be both fixed and flexible, and
so it is fixed within itself and flexible under thought. It
is the clay of the artist, neutral in its own qualities, but
retentive of the work committed to it. It offers ready
means to the most divine inflatus that strives to inform it
with a spiritual life. If w^e have the clay, pliant, incom-
plete, yet sensibly possessed of the transforming impulses
already given it ; if we have the artist, renewing his labor
from day to day, rejoicing in the fixed, rejoicing in the
flexible, then the process going on before us presents no
insoluble problem. The half-shaped clay without the
artist is a strange accident ; the artist without the clay
is a surprising and painful piece of impotence.

214 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

The world must be comprehensible, if it is to stand on
any terms of interaction with the thoughts of men ; and
if it is comprehensible, it must be correspondingly fixed.
But if it is also to yield itself to the hands of men as
themselves agents, it must be flexible ; and flexible with-
out losing the truth already committed to it. In meeting
these conditions, we have both nature and the super-
natural ; and as the supernatural is an airy idealism with-
out the natural, so is the natural a dead mechanism with-
out the supernatural. If we undertake to interpret our
lives by a denial on either hand, we simply call out a de-
lusive flash of light, bewildering us for a moment, and then
expiring in darkness. Matter can not shake off the do-
minion of reason and retain its value for reason. It must
forever remain enriched by reason, retentive of the work
of reason, and open to all Its further uses. On no other
terms can reason take any interest in it. This eternal
subjection is an Irreversiblelawof the Universe as rational,
while the precise times and the precise ways in which
reason will shape its work are questions of detail. It is
the last point of impossibility that the infinite reason
should become entangled in its own means and methods,
so as to make these, in any final way, a fixed order of
things, a closed circuit of events. This is for reason to
overwork itself. Reason stretches on and on ; its revolutions
are the revolutions of wheels that bear it forever forward.
There is in it continuity, evolution, but no return on it-
self. There is present with it the old, and still more
present with it the new — a bud bursting its filaments.
Creation as an act, an unending and growing act, accom-
panies the Creator in all the march of years. It is easy to
say that " the essence of a theological miracle is the violation
of natural law," but not easy to put back of the assertion

THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 21 5

any conception of natural law which does not make the
Universe sink into mechanism, and God into the supreme
mechanist. If natural law is the action of God, inflexible
or flexible according to the ends of reason then and there
present ; if law is reason, then reason may as well explain
its modifications as expound its continuity. Indeed,
natural laws must be subjected both in their grand sweep
and at their every turn to reason ; and to allow them to
shake off reason is to allow them to set up against reason,
having won a realm of their own. Time is not significant
in this question. Reason is an Eternal Presence, not a
principle, that bound fast in its first putting-forth can no
longer be reshaped or, shape that which is about it.
When the miracle is spoken of as a violation of law, the
mind has plainly come into subjection to the notion of
physical laws which have a sacredness and inviolability aside
from the purposes they are subserving. The one rule and
the only rule that is never to be broken is that of reason,
and this rule the miracle expresses. Physical laws are
fixed within their own ends, and for those, ends ; but to
regard them as fixed either without ends, or beyond those
ends, is to oppose them to reason, is so far to dethrone
reason, is atheism.

We cannot grant to natural laws any existence, any mo-
mentum, any authority beyond that which reason each
moment concedes to them. When the question of modifi-
cation arises, — either of a new creation or miraculous
restoration — it is purely one of reason, and if sufficient
reasons call for it, there is nothing in the nature of things
to oppose it. Things remain perfectly and forever in the
grasp of reason. There we find them, and there we must
leave them, or we begin at once to dethrone reason.

Religion always plants itself at the line of interaction

2l6 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

along which the natural and the supernatural skirt each
other. It has and can have no significance anywhere else.
In this respect it is like thought in the world, and realism
in philosophy ; it grasps double reins ; it has two terms,
and can dispense with neither of them. Any hesitancy
here in religion is suicidal, is the slow evaporation of the
waters of life. When we set up matter and force as inde-
pendent entities, over against mind, and begin to feel the
fear of them steal over us, we shall soon bow down in
worship before the Unknown which they embody for
the imagination.

Religion, as the highest form of reason, involves a na-
ture compounded of fixed terms under fixed laws, a
nature thereby made subject to man. Here enter the
possibilities of action and with them its duties. Reason
in finding a field for itself, finds one also for conscience.
Every thought of man and every effort on his part imply
and express this his relation to nature ; nor can the most
subtile reasoning deny it, without in the same act denying
itself. Religion goes farther. It affirms that nature, this
field of thought and action, lies between us and God, that
it is a condition of rational and responsible life provided
by him in reference to this very life. The world is not
looked upon as something that could not have been other-
wise, nor as something made rational by its own unfold-
ing, nor by man's survey of it ; but as a distinct product
of the Supreme Reason in its provision for the finite
reason of man. Nature is, therefore, momentarily subject
to the divine thought and will, and its perpetuity is their
expression ; its evolution is their evolution, its flexibility
under the hand of man their concession. That this nature,
so framed together for the ends of wisdom, should pre-
sent any obstacle to wisdom, or offer it any resistance as

THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 217

mere material, is absurd. It has nothing which is not
given unto it, and all having been given it in reference to
mind may readily and momentarily be modified in the
same service. Matter is a bond-servant to mind, and can
not for an instant shake off the yoke. The obscurities
which events offer in their explanation under this view to
the human mind are no refutation of it, since these are
but very partial, and must be present while our knowledge
remains of so limited an order.

By the medium of nature we approach God, by that
medium he approaches us. Nature in its fixedness, in its
mobility, in its progressive unfolding, in its flexibility — for
it has every one of these characteristics, one as truly as an-
other— is simply a fitting term for reason, and if Reason,
for more special and personal ends, chooses to m^odify its
action, there is nothing in nature which can stand up
against him and say, What doest thou ? Reason can be
questioned only by reason, and reason may deal with the
particular no less than with the general, with the unusual
no less than with the habitual. Man can easily recognize
the presence of the permanent and the changeable and
the fitness of both elements, though he may not be able
to fix the proper limits of either. That fixedness is neces-
sary is plain, that flexibility is necessary is plain, and by
what right does the human reason deny to the Divine Rea-
son either condition — more especially as both conditions are
essential, in the first place, in order that reason as reason
may assert itself at all in the world, or have any portion
in it, and, in the second place, in order that the world
may lie as a field between man and God, in which they
meet each other? In the degree in which nature is eter-
nal and unchangeable, in that degree, taken by itself alone,
does it hide God from us, separate him from us ; and in

21 8 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

the degree In which it does this, does it fail of its mission
as a revealer of Reason to reason. By labor, faith, and
prayer, we meet God in the world, and certainly not less
by prayer than by labor, not less in living faith than in
formal obedience. But these methods of action, labor and
prayer, scientific effort and religious love, — if we choose
so to term them — demand these two conditions, perma-
nency and change, and our life is mutilated if Ave lose
either of them. The spirit of faith, the spirit of prayer,
the spirit of fellowship, reason with reason, is the supreme
spirit in man, and if it is present in him, it makes a per-
petual appeal to the Divine Spirit. Some are fearful of
asking lest they should seem to strive to bend and warp
the Supreme Reason. They forget that nothing is so
flexible as reason ; they forget that there can be no term
more significant and hence more real and influential in
reference to divine action than this very term of trustful-
ness. The trustful and earnest heart is a perpetual petition
without uttering one word, and must send the force of
prayer through and through the spiritual universe. Words
are for men who hear them and men who utter them, not
for God who heeds the deeper petition of the heart.

These general relations are the relations of reason, and
must be conceded as such, or there is no basis for religion.
Religion in its thoughtfulness and in its love can only
spring up along this line, where the fixed and the flexible
meet and mingle. If Christ had stumbled at the super-
natural, or hesitated for an instant in reference to it, he
would have shown that he did not stand on the broad basis
of the divine government, but was entangled in the meshes
of physical law, and had fallen Into the shadow of nature ;
that he was a scientist or a philosopher of some order, and
not the Son of God. He makes no such mistake ; he deals
freely with the supernatural, freely with the natural, and

THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 219

SO has in hand the three terms of our present life, man,
nature, and God. It is mere trifling to distort the facts
of history in order to escape one miracle or another
miracle, when we see that the grand progress of events
include each instant this same supreme power.

The apologetic spirit of our time in reference to the
supernatural is the fruit of the one-sided and half-hearted
temper of scepticism. God is to our thoughts withdraw-
ing himself from nature, the spiritual host is in full re-
treat, and we are being left alone with matter and
motion. Matter and motion, what are they but one
thought of infinite magnitude unfolding itself before the
eyes of our reason ! The Infinite rushes in upon our
thoughts and hearts by this work of creation, which
springs up afresh every instant in our presence and his
presence by the common activity of reason — the poem of
the Great Poet passing in eternal rhythm before our eyes.

Nature and the supernatural in the world about us
are best interpreted to us by our own bodies. In these
bodies mingle freely mental energies and physical forces,
changeable purposes and fixed methods, the direction of
reason and the limitation of matter, spirit and form. Not
otherwise do the two flow together in the world about us.
The supernatural is the soul of the natural, and the
natural is the significant form of the supernatural ; and
neither is under any bond save the bond of reason. Na-
ture changes for and with the supernatural, and the super-
natural rests in the bosom of Reason, forever above nature
and the source of nature. Most petty and perplexing is
the antagonism that has been set up between the two in
the thoughts of men. It is as if we endowed language
-with forces and laws of its own as against the composite
reason which creates and uses it ; and this on the plea
that it is not instantly flexible to each act of reason or un-

220 THE WORDS OF CHRIST.

reason in each particular mind. If either of these ideas,
if any of its primitive supplementary elements, are lost
from the perfect circle of thought, the remainder slide
hither and thither, like the falling fragments in a kaleido-
scope, and we construct them, as they chance to lie, into
varying and fantastic forms. Christ sets up his kingdom
in spiritual power, and nature is with him only the throne
of that power. So must it be in any kingdom which is to
be the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

It may be thought that the elucidation which has now
been offered turns on a defmition — the definition we have
chosen to give of the supernatural. But definitions are of
value as they express facts, and the question is, therefore,
whether the nature of man does involve essentially
supernatural elements, and so gives us terms of transition
by which to reach the supernatural in its higher and purer
forms in God. The truth is that the lines of thought
which have made men sceptical of the supernatural, will,
if consistently carried out, sweep away every rational
basis of human life, and submerge the spiritual action of
man as completely as that of God. It is the human and
the divine personality in Christ, in its inseparable powers
and essential implications, in its hold on the present and
on the future, that makes him the way, the truth, and the
life. Losing him, we ourselves are lost also. We wander
wearily here and there, and at length lie down to die.
Once more catching sight of him, we who were lost are
found, and in his footsteps we follow on to life. Once
more we hope to win in ourselves what has been won in
him, an incarnation in the natural of the supernatural, a
Spiritual Presence dwelling w^ith men, men wrapped into
a Divine Life. If Christ can not lift us to this extent, he
can not remove our burden ; but this done, all other things
come of themselves.

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